


In the Woods Somewhere

by henriettahoney, themagicianandtheking



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Adam Parrish & Blue Sargent Friendship, Alive Noah Czerny, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Blue and Henry own a bakery and that's just begging for a spinoff amiright, Dragons and Shit, Everyone Is Gay, Fae & Fairies, Foursome - M/M/M/M, High Fantasy, I don't think I've done so many drawings in my life and I went to school for this, Joseph Kavinsky Being an Asshole, Joseph Kavinsky is His Own Warning, M/M, Multi, Multiple Pairings, Multiple Partners, One-Sided Joseph Kavinsky/Ronan Lynch, POV Adam Parrish, POV Alternating, POV Multiple, POV Noah Czerny, POV Richard Gansey III, POV Ronan Lynch, Psychic Abilities, lots of magic, nobody asked for this but we're having fun anyway, yeehaw
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-15
Updated: 2020-09-15
Packaged: 2021-03-03 21:06:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 32,878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24742015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/henriettahoney/pseuds/henriettahoney, https://archiveofourown.org/users/themagicianandtheking/pseuds/themagicianandtheking
Summary: "Ronan loved his home in Caeruleum, but the Wildwood was like a whole new brand of magic." (AKA the fae AU nobody asked for).
Relationships: Noah Czerny/Adam Parrish, Noah Czerny/Richard Gansey III, Noah Czerny/Richard Gansey III/Ronan Lynch/Adam Parrish, Noah Czerny/Ronan Lynch, Richard Gansey III/Adam Parrish, Richard Gansey III/Ronan Lynch, Ronan Lynch/Adam Parrish
Comments: 4
Kudos: 18





	1. Map of the Wildwood

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WHAT'S UP MOTHERFUCKERS I'M NOT DEAD  
> As usual, I have no excuses for neglecting to update my various unfinished multichapters and instead uploading something that Literally No One asked for. I know I'm the worst. BUT! Jess and I have been writing together for about ten years now (since real life fetus stage) and if anybody can kick my ass into finishing something, it's her. I've never been so proud of a single other work (and we're just getting started!) and I couldn't imagine bringing it to life with anyone else. Welcome to the high fantasy fae AU you never knew you needed. I sincerely hope you all enjoy.  
> P.S. This is gonna be an all-four-raven-boys-ship-fic (do the four of them have a ship name? someone lmk), so if you're not into that, we take no offense. Feel free to move along.  
> -Em (henriettahoney)
> 
> HELLO FRIENDS  
> I don't want to be too redundant here so I'll keep it brief by saying that although, like Em said, we have been writing together for pretty much forever, personally this is my first ever published work and I am so incredibly excited to share it. I'm so honored and proud to be a part of such an amazing project with such an amazing human, and I hope it inspires the same sort of feelings for you as it does for us.  
> -Jess (themagicianandtheking)


	2. Three of Swords

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "This was what it was like to kiss a king."

It was a beautiful day in the forest clearing. The sun was shining just enough to send sparkling rays of light down through the canopies of the trees that stood in a near perfect circle around the area, but not bright enough to have to squint the eyes against. The sound of singing birds and frogs, the babbling of the river, and the quiet rustling of leaves and grass dancing carelessly in the gentle breeze filled the air with soft, soothing music. Ronan had traveled a long way to reach this place. He knelt in the dew-damp grass at the bank of the river and dipped his slender, slightly webbed fingers into the cool, crystal clear water. He smiled as a small silver fish with a bright red stripe down its side darted by, brushing against his fingertips as it did. He cupped his hands and splashed some of the water over his face, warm and a little flushed from the day of travel in the sun. He took a deep breath. The soft scent of wildflowers and honeysuckle filled his lungs. A raven called gleefully overhead. 

“Well, well.” A voice so gentle and familiar that it coaxed a smile onto Ronan’s features before he even realized it sounded from behind him. He stood, shook water droplets from his fingers, and turned around. “Fancy meeting you here.” 

Gansey was sitting cross-legged on a fallen log that had long since been overgrown with ivy and moss, his hands folded neatly in his lap, the sunlight falling so perfectly on his face that he looked like he was glowing. Maybe he was. 

“You know,” Ronan said with a playful shrug. “I was just passing through.”

“Is that so?” Gansey uncrossed his legs, planted his feet on the ground, and sat forward, resting his arms on his knees. The dark, twisting, maroon ink of his tattoos, visible only up to just above his elbows where his bare skin met the sleeves of his tunic, almost shimmered in the sunlight. “Well, isn’t that just a perfect little coincidence? I happened to just be passing through as well.” 

“Imagine that.” Ronan smirked. He crossed the distance between the two of them, quite gracefully for having only been on his land legs for a day since the last time, thank you very much, and sat down beside Gansey, allowing his fingers to reach out and brush over his soft, golden brown hair. “Coincidence.” 

Gansey grinned, canines glittering and sharp. It was commonly preached rhetoric that there was nothing about a djinn’s outward appearance to set him apart from a human save for his tattoos, but Ronan tended to disagree. Anytime they were alone—which was anytime they were together—he could swear that he saw molten flames licking up Gansey’s irises. Something burning and starved shone within them that he’d never seen before in any other species. 

When he’d decided Ronan had spent too long staring—as he did anytime they were together—Gansey leaned into Ronan’s touch and turned his head, mouth brushing over the crease between Ronan’s palm and wrist. He held his lips there for a moment, assessing, and looked smug and pleased with himself upon pulling away. “Your heart is beating a mile a minute, siren. Careful it doesn’t jump out of your chest and swim downstream without you.”

Ronan playfully swatted his cheek. “It’s your fault. I can’t help that you look like... _that._ ”

Gansey’s eyebrow was amused. “And what, pray tell, do I look like?”

Ronan took in his thick, honey lashes, his supple, blush-pink lips, his elegantly sloping nose, his strong, regal cheekbones. “A king.”

“Well.” Gansey scoffed, soft and fond. “One day.”

“One day,” Ronan echoed. Whether this was in regard to Gansey or himself, it was untelling. 

All around them, the air was alive and electric. Ronan loved his home in Caeruleum, but the Wildwood was like a whole new brand of magic. He never failed to miss the thickets of blackberry bushes while he was away, the dense forest canopies, the vast expanses of mushroom fields. 

This—here—was his favorite place. The Glen. It was a handsomely sized clearing encircled by a gate of varying breeds of tree; some ash, some oak, some impossible to name, warped by their proximity to the farming groves and intermingling root systems to grow hybrid fae fruits. 

Gansey’s moss-covered log resided just beneath a branch of one such tree, and Ronan reached overhead to pluck a plump, indigo specimen. “Hungry?” he asked. 

Gansey’s eyes gleamed. 

Gingerly, Ronan raised the fruit (a cross between a dayberry and a royal plum, if he had to guess) to Gansey’s parted lips. 

Gansey bit down, quick, to tear the flesh, and lavender hued juice spilled from his mouth down his chin, cascading from the line of his neck onto the crisp collar of his ivory tunic. 

Ronan swallowed, lowering the fruit to his lap. 

“I’m terribly sorry,” Gansey breezed, lips glistening. “I seem to have made a mess of myself. Would you mind helping me clean up?”

Because Gansey knew that he would, Ronan leaned down, tongue extended and flat, and licked the trickle of juice from Gansey’s throat, collarbone to jaw. He was delighted to see that chills sprung to life in his wake. 

“There you go,” he said as he traced over Gansey’s soft, now slightly damp skin with the pad of his thumb to make sure he wasn’t still sticky, or maybe just to revel in the feeling of his goosebumps for the moment that they lasted. He raised his head but didn’t go far, lingering so close that he could feel Gansey’s warm breath on his mouth as their eyes met. “All clean.” 

“Thank you,” Gansey said, sounding a little breathless. The fire in his eyes burned impossibly brighter as he held Ronan’s gaze, fingers finding their way up to brush along the contour of Ronan’s pointed ear. “It’s very sweet, isn’t it?” 

“It is,” Ronan agreed. He let his eyes flutter closed to escape the heat of the flames and to catch his breath for just a moment. 

“The sweetest I’ve had, I believe. Would you like another taste?” 

Ronan opened his eyes again and grinned, wide and mischievous. Instead of answering, he did exactly what he knew Gansey was scheming and closed the distance between their lips, kissing him hungrily, both of them still tasting the nectar of the hybrid fruit and then each other. Gansey made a quiet sound, either displeased with Ronan for ruining his plans or the exact opposite. Either way, Ronan kept grinning. 

They were tangled up in each other. It was impossible to tell where the siren ended and the djinn began, their legs woven together, their fingers interlaced and then mapping out every inch of each other’s skin, committing it to memory, and then interlaced again, their mouths locked together in a perfectly practiced dance. 

Gansey fell from the moss-covered log into the soft bed of grass beneath it, pulling Ronan down on top of him, and tossed his head back to laugh. It was a sound sweeter to Ronan than even the juice from the strange hybrid fruit, even more musical to Ronan than the choir of birds overhead. A physical description of that new brand of magic. Ronan wondered for a moment if the Wildwood had made Gansey, or if Gansey had made the Wildwood. There was a reason he was destined to rule this place. 

Ronan kissed him again. This was what it was like to kiss a king. 

Nearby, the river splashed loudly. 

Ronan raised up to see what had caused the disturbance, but Gansey caught the prickly back of his shaved head with a gentle hand. 

“What’s wrong, love?” he asked, eyes soft and worried.

“Nothing.” Ronan shook his head, leaning down to kiss the corner of Gansey’s mouth. “Just thought I heard something. Probably just a big fish.” 

He trailed up along Gansey’s jawline to rest just below his ear. Gansey’s fingertips stroked the length of Ronan’s sternum, finding their way down to linger on his hip, and Ronan made a soft sound of contentment, just enough to make Gansey shiver.

Nearby, branches cracked under careless feet. 

Ronan raised up again, this time pushing through Gansey’s touch. His breath caught in his throat. 

“Well, what do we have here?” the intruder asked with a wicked grin. He was leaning lazily against one of the fruit trees with his arms crossed over his bare chest, his jet black hair soaked from the river and dripping onto his pale face, the gills on his necks still in the process of retracting to something akin to scars. He hadn’t bothered to don even so much as undergarments, which measured up precisely to Ronan’s expectations of him. He looked smug. Or angry. Or both. “I knew I’d find you eventually, _Lynch._ ” 

“Shit,” Ronan breathed, eyes wide. “Kavinsky.”

“Nice to see you too. Surprised you even recognize me.” The other siren scoffed, shaking his fingers through his hair, causing it to fall into his eyes, and held his arms out to his sides. “Since all you do these days is sneak around with your precious little boyfriend.” 

Gansey opened his mouth to speak. Kavinsky’s head snapped toward him and he bared his teeth viciously. “I’m not talkin’ to you, princeling. Mind your business.” His voice was harsh and venomous, his eyes charged and dangerous. He looked toxic and out of place standing in the light of the Glen. Gansey closed his mouth. 

“What do you want?” Ronan demanded. He squeezed Gansey’s hand before he got to his feet. Gansey stood up after him. 

“I want you to come home, baby,” Kavinsky told him, his voice honeyed and patronizing. “That doesn’t seem like too much to ask. And you know, I’m sure your little baby brother misses you just as much as I do. He probably—”

“Don’t fucking talk about Matthew,” Ronan growled, fists clenched as he started forward toward Kavinsky. But he was stopped in his tracks by Gansey catching his wrist. 

“Don’t,” Gansey whispered, shaking his head. “It’s not worth it, Ronan, he’s trying to upset you.” 

“Yeah, well, it’s working,” Ronan hissed under his breath. 

“Ooh, struck a nerve.” Kavinksy’s impossibly wide grin somehow grew even wider, delighted by Ronan’s rage. 

“That’s enough,” Gansey said firmly, still holding Ronan back. “We’re finished—” 

“We’re done when I say we’re done,” Kavinsky barked, any sweetness in his voice replaced with unbridled violence for just a moment. He paused, his eyes falling closed, and took a deep breath of the floral air before opening them again. “I see why you like it here, Lynch. It’s nice. Real pretty.” He held Ronan’s gaze as he spat on the ground. 

“Go home,” Ronan ordered. Kavinsky laughed, which actually sounded more like shrieking than laughing. Ronan shuttered at the sound. He longed to still be hearing Gansey’s sweet, musical laughter instead. 

“Oh, baby,” Kavinsky purred darkly once he’d stopped. “You’re not king yet. I don’t take orders from you. _You_ take orders from _me.”_

“Fuck you,” Ronan snarled. 

Something vile crossed Kavinsky’s features. A smile maybe, or sadness, or anger—a realization, a plan. 

“Fine,” he decided, throwing his hands up in surrender and he started back toward the river. “Fine. You don’t want to come with me, whatever, so be it.” He stopped at the water’s edge. “But big brother King Declan is gonna have your head.” 

He dove in and shot downstream like a lightning bolt, gone in a split second. 

Ronan turned to Gansey with wild eyes. 

“Go,” Gansey breathed, sitting back down on his moss-covered log, the half eaten fruit lying at his feet, staining the grass a lavender purple. 

“I’ll never catch him.” 

“You have to try.” 

Ronan hesitated for a moment before nodding and breaking into a sprint toward the river. 

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

_Five-year-old Richard Campbell Gansey III stood on the dock, his father’s coats brushing his shoulder, enamored._

_He had never been so close to the sea before; never so near to its briny depths for the salt to sting his cheeks. It was tremulous and grounding. Terrible and great. Larger than life and, somehow, smaller than Gansey himself._

_“How will we know when they come?” he asked his father._

_Richard Gansey II chuckled, lovingly stroking back his son’s hair. “You’ll see.”_

_And see he did. A heartbeat later, the water began to ripple and then vibrate and then swell, a multitude of white-capped waves springing to life above the ocean’s surface. It was as though some great force was pressing upward against the water from beneath, coaxing it into a frenetic frenzy._

_Gansey was awestruck._

_One by one, in a diamond formation, he saw the tops of heads beginning to surface. As they drew closer, the tops of heads became_ whole _heads, became heads on necks, became gills beneath tapered ears._

_At the foremost point, there was a man. His eyes were mercurial, shifting from silver to sea-foam to black as night. He was close enough now—so close, nearly touching the dock—that Gansey could see two long, silvery tails extended outward behind him, twisting and coalescing, as though they were serpents of their own right, not to be controlled by the mere technicality of attachment to a body. Perhaps, Gansey considered, they were._

_Behind the man, to his left, swam a woman. Where he was dark, she was light. In contrast to his pitch hair and furrowed brow, she wore a soft, almost vacant smile, long, honeysuckle blonde locks billowing out behind her. She seemed to be swimming only with her tails, arms tucked beneath her torso, and Gansey made out with some difficulty that this was because she held a golden-haired, pearlescent-tailed baby to her breast. The water was slightly murky around them, where, every few seconds, a drop of milk would escape the child’s lips. Gansey looked away._

_To the man’s right, there was a boy. A couple of years older than Gansey himself, if he had to guess, with the same dark features and demeanor as his father. He wore a scowl and a frown, and regarded Gansey somewhat warily, the tips of his smoky grey fins flicking from the water next to him._

_The boy in the back—_

_The boy in the back was gone._

_Gansey blinked, confused, and tugged at his father’s coats. “There was just—” he began, but before he could finish, a flash of black cut through the water, oily and quick._

_Not a second later, the smaller boy (much closer to Gansey’s own size) emerged at the edge of the dock, slapping the ledge victoriously and twirling back to beam at the man who was now behind him. He coughed, harsh and wet, a cascade of water spilling over his lips, and then, voice gravel-rough, “Beat you! Told you I would.”_

_Much more graciously, the man turned his back to the dock and covered his mouth to cough. When he turned back around, he ruffled the boy’s coal-colored curls, finally raising his own hand to grip the edge of the dock. “Forgive Ronan,” he said, words clearly directed to Gansey’s father. “He tends to get a little ahead of himself. As well as the rest of us. You’re Richard, I presume?”_

_Gansey’s father crouched to shake the man’s hand. “Pleasure. Niall?”_

_“In the flesh.” Niall accepted Gansey’s father’s shifted grip, hands around wrists, and Gansey realized it was to pull him up from the water. “This is my wife, Aurora,” he introduced, once he’d lifted his tails fully onto the wooden planks. They were so starkly silver_ _that Gansey couldn’t look directly at them lest the reflection from the sun momentarily blind him._

_“Lovely to meet you,” Gansey II told her, tastefully leveling his gaze to hers and no lower as he gingerly assisted Niall in hoisting her onto the dock with the babe still suckling her breast._

_“You as well,” Aurora responded after leaning down to daintily cough up water, nodding to her chest when she’d righted herself and accepting a handkerchief from Gansey’s father to dab at the corners of the infant’s mouth as he gurgled. “This little lad is Matthew, and our handsome gentleman there is Declan.”_

_Gansey must have missed Declan clearing his land lungs, because he said, swift and immediate, “How do you do?” nodding his thanks as Gansey’s father helped him from the water._

_The other boy—Ronan, Gansey remembered—glared mischievously at his mother, and then webbed fingers were gripping her yellow-gold tails, tightening down to give him leverage to climb._

_Aurora’s laugh was like a song._

_Gansey felt tears springing to his eyes at the sound, unaware of why or what the growing tightness in his chest was expressive of. Gansey’s mother loved him fiercely, but this sound, the sound of Aurora loving Ronan, made him ache for a specific sanction of unbridled affection that he’d never quite known._

_“Manners, darling,” she reminded him playfully, scuffing his chin with her forefinger._

_Ronan’s jet tails curled and uncurled around his mother’s, and something about the action read to Gansey as manically excited. “Sorry, mama. Hey! Who are you?”_

_This, Gansey realized too late, was meant for him. “O-oh,” he stuttered, eyes cast to the dock, where the ends of Niall’s tails were beginning slowly to split and form toes rather than fins. He was accepting an armful of clothing from Gansey’s father, and judging by the multitude of linens, Gansey guessed he’d brought land attire for all of them. “I’m Gansey.”_

_“That’s a funny name.”_

_When Gansey looked back to him, his breath caught on Ronan’s irises, melting from violet to indigo to sky-blue._

_“That’s all there is.”_

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

_Thirteen-year-old Richard Campbell Gansey III was standing on the bank of a crystal clear river at the edge of a beautiful forest clearing holding hands with a raven-haired boy who was still dripping with river water and swaying slightly on his land legs. Ronan hadn’t bothered to even shake dry before dressing in the overly fancy clothes Gansey had brought for him, so the fabric had immediately become damp and was clinging to his skin. He pulled absently at the collar of the tunic._

_“This is…” he breathed, his strange, mercurial eyes wide and filled with wonder, “...amazing. How did you find it?”_

_“I couldn’t sleep one night, so I went out on a walk.” Gansey’s bright smile glowed with fondness and pride. This place was his. Not that he felt like it_ belonged _to him, per se, but that it existed just for him. A safe space. A sanctuary. He thought he had been walking in a dream when he’d discovered it, only to find that it still existed in the waking world. He could have sworn it wasn’t there the night before. “I just happened to stumble upon it.”_

_Ronan released Gansey’s hand and made his way to one of the strange and beautiful twisting fruit trees, reaching up to pluck one of the almost iridescent blue fruits from the branches. “What is this?” he asked, turning it over in his hand to examine it. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”_

_“Neither have I,” Gansey said, shaking his head. “The color reminds me a bit of a moon fruit, but it’s shaped more like a dayberry.”_

_Ronan raised the fruit to his lips._

_“Wait.” Gansey stopped him by gently catching his wrist, anxiety creeping into his voice. “I’m not sure if it’s safe to eat.”_

_“Only one way to find out.” Ronan cocked a brow and grinned, mischievous and beautiful. Gansey looked away. Ronan bit into the fruit and made a soft, contented sound that caused Gansey to raise his eyes back to the other boy._ _  
__“What does it taste like?”_

_“Nothing I’ve ever tasted before.” Ronan shook his head. “I can’t describe it. Here, try.” He offered the fruit out to Gansey, bypassing his hands completely and holding it up to his mouth. Gansey met his eyes and took a bite. He smiled. It tasted like it had been crafted for him._

_“Good, right?” Ronan was still grinning._

_“Very.”_

_“Oh, look!” Ronan suddenly thrust the strange fruit into Gansey’s hands and started toward a vibrant patch of wildflowers, his midnight curls bouncing as he ran. The flowers were a myriad of colors, some of which Gansey couldn’t put a name to. They stood out starkly against the soft green grass, and were surrounded by dozens of butterflies, each insect just as bright and colorful as the flower below it. Ronan knelt to brush the tips of his webbed fingers over the delicate petals of a turquoise lily. When he turned around to beam up at Gansey the color of his ever-changing irises perfectly matched the color of the flower in his hand. He turned back to the bed of flowers to reach out to a different one, a soft yellow hyacinth this time, and stopped, eyes wide, still as a stone statue, as a tiny pink butterfly landed on the tip of his nose. The butterfly stood still for a moment before fluttering its soft, delicate wings and causing Ronan to sneeze. He laughed out loud, joyous and whimsical, as the frightened creature fled._

_Gansey was in awe. Not only of the unimaginable beauty of the clearing, but of the boy in the wildflowers before him. This place was made for Gansey. How lucky he was to share it with Ronan._

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

_Eighteen-year-old Richard Campbell Gansey III stood—rather steadily, for only just having been revived several hours earlier—before his vanity mirror, replaying the events of the past days—or, at least, what he’d been told of them—over in his mind._

_Event one: Niall Lynch had committed an unforgivable crime. Well, perhaps the crime itself hadn’t been unforgivable. Perhaps, in fact, the crime itself, committed differently, wouldn’t have been a crime at all. However…_

_Event two: Gansey had died as a result._

_Event three: Gansey’s parents had consulted healers, paid their weight in gold for tinctures and elixirs, and brought shamans into the palace to speak over him, but once the reality became unavoidable to them that no more could be done to save their son, Niall Lynch had been sentenced to death. The deliverance of such news cast Aurora into a catatonic coma, which meant, effectively, that the Lynch brothers had lost both of their parents in one fell swoop._

_Event four: Upon escorting Niall to the Hanging Gardens, intersectional with Niall’s last, gasping breaths, King Richard Gansey II had met someone—some_ thing?— _with whom he’d struck a deal._

_Event five: Gansey had been brought back to life._

_He’d been dead for three days, according to his sister. His parents had refused to bury him any sooner. It seemed that no matter how many times his mortality came to pass, they harbored the same philosophy: princes were not meant to die. Not before they became kings._

_To be fair, Gansey hadn’t technically died before. He’d simply been born still and unbreathing._

_He couldn’t recall now the first time he’d heard, “The djinn is like the phoenix; to the fire he returns and by the fire he is reared.” It was a mantra that had become common tongue in the kingdom, typically reduced to its latter half for brevity’s sake. The wise-woman who’d divined his resurrection had spoken it to his parents: a riddle that had led them to offer him to the volcano—_ his _volcano._

_Absently, he fingered the cotton of his tunic’s collar, trailing over the scar tissue—as old as he was—blooming up the back of his neck._

_He could feel the volcano now, sorrowful and so deeply ashamed to have been the cause of his recently reversed demise that he couldn’t dwell on it long enough to send more than a simple, forgiving pulse its way._ It wasn’t your fault, _he tried to assure it._ You still saved me in the end. _But the swell became more overwhelming until his only choice was to shut it out in its entirety._

_Instead, he focused his attention back on the mirror. Or, more specifically, what was reflected back to him in it._

_On his vanity seat, close enough to touch, sat Ronan Lynch. Gansey hadn’t been awake—or_ alive, _he supposed—for Ronan’s arrival, but according to Helen, his intention had been to attend Gansey’s memorial. Luckily, mere hours later, Gansey had woken as good as new, if not a little thirsty._

_In Ronan’s hand was Gansey’s own ritual dagger._

_Gansey watched, teeth worrying the inside of his cheek, as Ronan raised the dagger to his head, holding his last remaining lock of thick, black curls by two fingers and shaving it as easily as if he’d been using a straight razor. All around his head now, there was no more than an uneven, buzzed layer. Gansey’s vanity and the floor around it were blanketed in hair, and there was something about the picture so intimately seeded in grief that Gansey cast his eyes away._

This is happening because of you. 

_“Ronan—” he began, but before he could get any further, Ronan was no more than a flash of movement, vanity seat toppling to the floor, and Gansey was being pinned roughly to the wall._

Ah. Here. Is he still holding the dagger? His father’s death is only justified if you’re dead, too. His mother is as good as gone as well, just as much on your head. Don’t blame him. Don’t fight it. Don’t—

_Ronan was kissing him._

Oh. 

_Ronan was_ kissing _him._

_Rough and desperate and pleading, Ronan’s mouth parted Gansey’s own to make way for his tongue, teeth grazing lips, breath coming too quick and short from both parties for Gansey to see more than stars when he opened his eyes._

_They had never done this before._

_They’d spent countless evenings in the Glen holding hands, lying in each other’s laps, ghosting breath over cheeks and foreheads and ears. But not this._

_Never this._

_“Ronan—” Gansey tried again, marginally more winded._

_“Shut up,” Ronan told him._

_Gansey shut up._

_Moments or hours or days later, both boys undressed to the waist and lying still and silent in Gansey’s bed, Ronan drummed his fingertips against Gansey’s sternum, stopping only to flatten his hand and seek out Gansey’s heartbeat._

_“A little more to the left,” Gansey murmured, and Ronan complied, visibly relaxing when his palm came to rest just over Gansey’s heart. “What are you thinking?”_

_For a beat, Ronan hesitated. Then, as though considering the weather, “My dad’s really dead.”_

_Gansey’s insides twisted._

_Ronan made no move to vacate his chest. “Declan’s gonna be king now. He’ll never—not after—everything’s going to change.”_

_Gansey’s insides twisted further._

He’ll never let me see you again. 

Not after what your father did to mine. 

Everything’s going to change. 

_Gansey shuddered._

_Ronan looked up._

_“It wasn’t your fault. And if I’d lost you, I’d—” He paused, scrubbing a hand over the stubble on his chin. He looked exhausted and aged and more than a little vacant, but there was a fierceness in his ever-shifting eyes that Gansey had never seen before. “If I’d lost you for real, fuck the Gardens. I would’ve killed him myself.”_

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Twenty-two-year-old Richard Campbell Gansey III sat alone and quiet, lost in thought, on a moss-covered log that was shaded by a strange hybrid fruit tree in a beautiful forest clearing. The dew-damp grass danced like tiny arms, reaching up and swaying in the cool, gentle breeze as the birds sang a song that hadn’t sounded so mournful just a moment before. He was crying. Sort of. It felt more like his eyes were watering than like he was actually crying, because his mind was somewhere that his body was not while his body was processing what his mind would not allow him to consider.

Everything was going to change. 

He was never going to see Ronan again.

In fact, Ronan would be lucky if his brother Declan, ruthless and unforgiving and nothing-like-his-father king of Caeruleum, didn’t have him executed on the spot. He had, after all, committed an act of high treason. If you were Ronan Lynch, sneaking out to meet Gansey in the Wildwood meant gambling with your title, and probably your life. They should have known they would get caught eventually. 

Absently, Gansey reached up to wipe the tears from his chin with the back of his hand, only to have them replaced with fresh ones almost instantly. The sounds of sirens diving into the river, one a moment too late to catch the other in time, still echoed in his ears. He felt numb and empty. He had to remind himself to breathe. 

The clothes Ronan had been wearing were strewn wildly across the clearing, torn from him as he’d sprinted for the water. Gansey stood from the log and gathered them up, folding them meticulously and placing them neatly at the bank of the river as if Ronan might come back for them. 

He was still crying and the birds were still mourning. The thick scent of wildflowers and honeysuckle made him feel a little sick. A raven called sorrowfully overhead. 

He couldn’t stay here without Ronan for another moment, so he started back toward the palace. 

The Gansey palace stood at the northernmost edge of the Wildwood forest, the ivory of its walls and tall, twisting spires stark against the deep rich greens of the canopies, the crest of the mighty volcano looming behind it like a quiet—or not so quiet if you were Gansey—ever vigilant guardian, almost always cool and collected, unassuming and docile, but explosive and dangerous when angered. 

The perimeter of the Ganseys’ land was outlined by ornate wrought iron fencing, deep maroon in color, reminiscent of the markings that decorated Gansey’s arms. The large, regal gate rolled open as if it were bowing to Gansey in response to an elegant and practiced wave of his right hand. He entered the courtyard and the gate politely fell shut behind him. 

“Oh, there you are, Dick!” Gansey’s older sister, Helen, was stretched out on one of the stone benches in the courtyard with a book in one hand and a glass of faerie wine on the ground beside her. She was dressed in a flowing red silk gown that hung lazily about her legs and the gray stone of the bench, and her long, golden brown hair was pulled up in a tight, sleek ponytail. She sat up, took a drink from her glass, and beckoned for Gansey as soon as she saw her brother pass through the gate. “Where have you been?” She asked with a playful, knowing smile. Gansey wished she would stop looking at him like that. He wondered if his lashes were still damp from crying. He wondered if she would notice. 

“I just went for a walk,” Gansey told her. He wished his voice wasn’t shaking. 

“Oh, you. Very funny,” Helen teased lightly, and then, humor replaced with care and genuine curiosity, “So, how is he?” 

Gansey felt as though he might crumble into a thousand pieces right there before her. He started to speak, to lie to her, to satisfy her with a generic, ‘oh, Ronan’s doing very well, he said to tell you hello,’ or, ‘Ronan’s just as wild and brash as you remember him, just taller now,’ but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. The truth was too painful to be masked by well intentioned falsities. He took a deep breath, cast his eyes to the ground, and simply breathed, “We got caught, Helen.” 

“Oh dear,” Helen sighed, her cheerful, bright demeanor immediately shifting to something sympathetic and filled with worry. “Does Declan know?”

“He will.” Gansey’s voice broke as he nodded and sifted his fingers through his hair, gaze still fixed on the ground beneath his feet. The courtyard grass was cut short and neat, so different from the wild, overgrown grass in the Glen that it felt almost surreal. 

“Oh, honey.” Helen stood swiftly from the bench to take Gansey’s hand in hers. “I don’t know what to say. I’m so sorry.” 

Gansey shrugged his shoulders. 

“Why don’t you come inside and have dinner? Mom’s making…well, she’s making _something_. You know how her cooking is.” 

Gansey didn’t feel much like eating anything, let alone their mother’s cooking. 

“Or I could just make you some tea instead,” Helen offered gently. “How does that sound?”

“Tea sounds nice,” Gansey agreed halfheartedly. “Thank you.”

  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Buckle up kids (and also hydrate and take your meds) the shitshow has begun  
> Kudos and comments fuel the hellfire that is our motivation so drop some of those if you want (our Tumblr usernames are the same as our AO3 usernames so feel free to come say shit over there too) 👌🏻  
> Happy reading!  
> -Em & Jess


	3. Five of Cups

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Lying on the ground, entirely devoid of clothing and covered head to toe in blood, was a boy.  
> Or rather, what was left of one."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW/CW: gore

Noah Czerny’s little sister was insidious. 

She wasn’t. Not really. But Noah’s brain, because its favorite pastime was overdramatizing mildly inconveniencing events, had determined that she, in fact, _was._

 _“Adelia!”_ he shrieked. He was proud of it. He’d have been a seasoned entrepreneur in the business of shrieking by now, were shrieking a more lucrative talent. 

_“What?!”_ Adele shrieked back, from what he guessed to be her bedroom window. A crow either approved or vehemently protested her contribution, squawking loudly as it soared over the courtyard above Noah’s head. 

Noah sighed, put out that no one else was around to witness his exquisite presentation, and fell back across his sunning chaise, draping an arm over his eyes when the light glinted too harshly off the red-black marble embedded in the center of his chest. 

It was midday, which meant that it was growing marginally hotter than it had been before such, and Noah would have loved nothing more than a nice, refreshing flute of chilled faerie wine. 

Noah’s current predicament, however, was that he’d lifted the lid of the silver filigree ice bucket on the bar cart stationed next to his lounge chair to find...nothing. 

Well, nothing save for a truly depressing puddle of water and a dozen or so half-melted spheres of ice. 

His entire wine decanter was missing, along with his crystal chalice. 

No one but wait staff was on the grounds today save for Noah’s sister and himself, and no one else would have dared touch his wine. 

For starters, had a handmaid favored a drink, she would have needed no more than to ask. 

Furthermore, Noah had seen Adele slipping into the west door leading off the courtyard and back into the Estate as he’d exited the east. 

Just as he was opening his mouth to shriek at her again, Adele materialized before him, clearly having flown down from her balcony. In either of her hands was clasped one of his objects of desire. “Are you looking for these?”

Noah squinted up at her. “Can you move a little to the left? No, _my_ left. I need you to block the sun. Thanks.”

Adele handed him back the decanter—only about a quarter of the way empty—along with the glass, taking a step to the side. Her clear-blue sylph wings fluttered behind her, swathes of fog swirling about her form to cover her solid, humanesque body. She was no longer insidious.

Noah poured himself a drink. 

Because he couldn’t afford the concentration today—something was a hair amiss in the energy of the Wildwood, causing him to glitch ever-so-subtly in and out of visibility if he focused too much attention on something as draining as manipulating air into clothing could be—he’d opted for a pair of cream linen pants and no shirt, which was turning out to be a decision he regretted deeply considering the rapidly-increasing heat. His fair, sylph skin would begin burning any second.

Weighing how much concern he held for this fact when Adele plopped down in the seat to the bar cart’s right side, abandoning her post as his shield, he sipped his wine. It wasn’t quite as cool as he’d have liked (Adele gained back one insidious point) but it would do. 

The dazzling, white stone of the courtyard glittered brilliantly, a carpet of diamonds decorated delicately by the manicured grass sewn between each tile. A bluebird landed briefly on one of the steeples of the ivory fence surrounding the property, trilling like a chime before taking off again. It was, Noah had to admit, a beautiful day. 

“Sorry about the wine,” his sister breezed. She’d reduced the fog to covering her only as underwear would, exposing her midsection and extremities to the sun, as though she’d suddenly become prone to tanning. “I was under the impression that I’d be...entertaining guests. But they’ve failed me.”

Noah cocked a pale brow. _“Entertaining guests?_ Anyone delicious?”

Adele pouted, a slight furrow growing between her icy eyes. “Yes. You remember Ammarie, the pixie? And, um...oh, what was his name? The elf boy? The one with the—”

“With the split tongue,” Noah finished, nodding, appropriately interested. “Carroway. Delicious indeed. Why have your playthings abandoned you, dear sister?”

Adele waved a hand, snatching the decanter back from Noah to take a long pull. “A funeral and a birth. Nothing gossip-worthy. Just—”

“Just life and death.” Noah rolled his eyes, bored, and announced, “I’m bored. I’m going for a run.”

“You didn’t even finish your drink,” Adele accused, nodding toward Noah’s half-full glass. 

Noah shrugged, extracting himself from his seat. He supposed he’d wanted the wine less than he’d wanted Adele _not_ to have it. Now that it was clasped back in her hand’s carefully manicured embrace, he wasn’t interested in echoing the same, tired faux-fight. 

“Back by dinner,” Adele called after him as he headed toward the gate, knowing full well that there was as good as an even divide in such a chance. 

Noah, as though he hadn’t heard her, flung open the hinge and darted off into the trees without bothering to latch it behind him. 

______________________________________________________________________________________________________

_Ten year old Noah Czerny had heard countless stories about the world outside the Wildwood, but to him they were just that; stories. He knew, of course, of Caeruleum, the kingdom under the sea. He had seen with his own eyes the sirens emerging from the waves, watching from afar under the arms of his parents as their beautiful tails transformed to graceful legs, so he knew they were real. He knew, of course, of the Mountain of Fire to the north and the djinn that ruled from their ivory palace beneath it and beyond the trees. But the stories his mother told him about humans crossing the border from another world to walk the Death Path at the end of their lives he found too fantastical to really be true. He couldn’t wrap his head around the idea of there being more than the forest and the sea, the only things he knew._

_That was, until he met a human in person._

_Noah and his sister Adele were spending the sunny afternoon out in the forest, gathering up all the pretty pine cones they could find and sticking wildflowers in each other’s white-blonde hair, laughing and rolling around in the soft grass. The cool breeze subtly threatened a coming storm, the kind that the children’s mother always said came about when a dying human was crossing over, but Noah and Adele paid it no mind._

_“Oh, Noah, look at this one!” Adele called as she bent to pick up what Noah could only assume, based on her level of excitement, was the most perfect pine cone they had found all day._

_“I’ll be right there,” Noah called back. He started to pick up the basket they were using to carry their findings, planning to bring it over to Adele, but he was distracted by a rustling sound in the grass not far from where he was standing. He set the basket back down on the ground. “Just a second.”_

_“What are you doing?” Adele asked. She was walking toward Noah, looking curious and excited._

_“Shh,” Noah hushed her, pressing a finger to his lips. “I thought I heard something moving around over here.” He crept closer to the source of the sound as Adele stopped to watch._

_“What is it?” She asked, her voice no more than a whisper._

_“I don’t—” Noah started, turning his head to look back at his sister, but as he did he took a misstep and tripped clumsily over a tree root he hadn’t seen, falling forward and landing on his hands and knees. “—know.”_

_There was a sudden flash of red and brown fur as a young fox took the opportunity to leap from its hiding place in the leaves and flee._

_“Oh!” Noah exclaimed as he scrambled to his feet to run after the terrified animal._

_“Noah, wait!” Adele shouted after him. “Mother said back by dinner! And it looks like rain!”_

_Noah might as well not have heard her._

_The fox led him along the river toward the sea. He could smell and taste the salt in the air as they grew closer. The fox was swift, but Noah held his own, taking care to leap over roots and stones, letting his wings carry him over anything that might trip him up again. They were approaching what Noah knew to be the Death Path, the dirt road that stretched across the southern outskirts of the forest, the divide between the Wildwood and Caeruleum. A deep roll of thunder rumbled overhead. Noah stopped running and looked up. The fox veered sharply to the right and disappeared into the grass. Noah was alone._

_He wandered further. Curious. He had seen the Death Path before, but only in passing, carried on his father’s shoulders. He had never been close enough to examine the ground for footprints, never stood and imagined what it would be like to be a human standing in this place for the first time at the end of his life, listening to the sounds of the forest and the waves crashing against the sand. He knelt to brush the tips of his fingers through the soft, dark dirt._

_“Ah.” A voice, deep and unfamiliar, startled Noah to his feet. “Well aren’t you just a perfect little thing?”_

_Before Noah stood a tall, dark haired, dark eyed man wearing a deep navy jacket and carrying a leather messenger bag. Beside him laid another man, bloody and unmoving. Noah looked away and back to the standing man._

_“Are you… a human?” he asked hesitantly._

_The man smiled. “I am,” he said, his voice gentle and welcoming. “And you would be…no, no, let me guess. A winged elf? No. Perhaps a pixie? Although you’re a bit large to be a pixie so… Ah, I’ve got it. You’re a sylph.”_

_Noah offered the man a hesitant, uneasy smile and nodded._

_“Come closer,” the man said, reaching his hand out to Noah. “Let me get a better look at you.”_

_“Are you dying?” Noah asked, standing firmly where he was._

_“No, I’m not dying,” the man responded sincerely, shaking his head._

_“Then how did you get here?” Noah grew more wary. “Mother says humans can only come to the Wildwood if they’re dying.”_

_“I came with my friend,” the man answered. “He, unfortunately,_ was _dying.”_

_“Oh,” Noah said, glancing down at the dead man lying at the tall man’s feet, then looking away again. “I’m sorry.”_

_“It’s alright, little one.” The man smiled. “He was merely a means to an end.”_

_“Oh,” Noah repeated nervously._

_“What is your name?” the man asked, kneeling down in the dirt._

_Noah told him._

_“That’s a lovely name.” The man offered his hand again. “It’s nice to meet you, Noah. They call me Laumonier.”_

_Noah took Laumonier’s hand. Laumonier grinned and gently squeezed Noah’s fingers._

_“So fragile,” he sighed, examining Noah’s small, nearly translucent wrist. “Just the sort of thing I was hoping for.” He pulled Noah forcefully toward his chest and reached for his bag. Noah whimpered and struggled against him._

_“Oh hush,” Laumonier sighed. “This doesn’t need to be difficult.”_

_“Let go of me!” Noah cried, immediately followed by a violent clap of thunder._

_Laumonier put his hand around the base of Noah’s neck, gentle, not meaning to hurt him, only to hold him still. Noah felt something sharp pierce the soft skin just beneath his jaw._

_“See.” Laumonier’s voice sounded strange and distant. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”_

_Noah’s eyelids were starting to feel heavy. Laumonier lifted him off the ground as he fell asleep._

_Noah woke up behind bars._

_He was in an unfamiliar room, in a place that felt strange and quiet, lying on his back in a cage with no recollection of how he got there. He sat up, which made him a little dizzy, and rubbed his eyes._

_In the corner of the room, there was a girl who looked to be just a few years older than Noah himself. She was sitting in a wicker armchair, so still that Noah thought maybe she was a doll at first. Her honey blonde hair fell over her porcelain shoulders in perfect waves, and her dark eyes were staring right at Noah. She sat forward, resting her arms on her knees._

_“Hi,” she said flatly._

_Noah didn’t respond. He looked away from the girl._

_“You got a name?” she asked._

_“Noah,” Noah breathed, drawing his knees up to his chest and wrapping his arms around them, resting his chin on top of them and still not looking at the girl._

_“I’m Piper,” she said._

_Noah didn’t say anything._

_“How old are you?” Piper asked._

_“Ten,” Noah said softly._

_“I’m fourteen,” she told him. “About to be fifteen but my father says I’m not allowed to tell anyone I’m fifteen until my actual birthday.”_

_“Because you’re not fifteen until your actual birthday,” Noah said._

_“Well, yeah.” Piper rolled her eyes and leaned back in her chair again, exasperated. “But whatever, close enough.”_

_“Where are we?” Noah asked shakily after a moment of silence._

_“My house,” Piper answered nonchalantly. “My dad brought you here a couple days ago. You’ve been asleep.”_

_“Oh.” Noah understood._

_“He’s gonna sell you,” Piper continued, getting up from her seat and kneeling in front of the cage, slender fingers wrapping around the bars. “Dad sells magic things. Makes a lot of money doing it.”_

_Noah closed his eyes._

_“He’s gonna teach me how to properly sell magic things, ‘cause I’m gonna take over when he dies,” she continued._

_“Piper!” a voice Noah immediately recognized as the voice of his kidnapper, Laumonier, shouted from somewhere beneath them. “Get down here and stop meddling in my affairs!”_

_Piper rolled her eyes again and stood up._

_“Catch ‘ya later, magic thing,” she said, saluting him before turning to push open something akin to a trap door that lowered a flimsy flight of stairs. She shut it behind her, leaving Noah to his cage, alone in the dark, musty room. He quietly went back to sleep._

_Noah was woken some time later—maybe a few hours, maybe a few days; he had no way of knowing—to the sound of arguing downstairs. Piper’s voice was raised and heated, Laumonier’s calm and measured but booming._

_“It’s not fair!” Piper shouted. “I want to go with you. I want to see what it’s like. I need to know these things, dad!”_

_“I don’t care what you want, Piper,” Laumonier said, to which Piper responded with a furious, wordless sound._

_“You’re treating me like a fucking child,” she snapped._

_“_ Language _,” Laumonier growled. “I’m treating you like a child because you are acting like a child. And children have no business anywhere near this sort of thing.”_

 _“I need to learn the process.” Piper sounded desperate. “I need to learn what it’s like, how to talk to these people. How do you expect me to hold my own with them in the future if you won’t teach me? And this is the best time to learn! You’ve never brought a_ person _back before.”_

_“You’re not ready yet. And the stakes are too high.”_

_“I am ready!”_

_“This discussion is over, Piper.”_

_“Whatever.”_

_A moment later Noah heard a door slam so hard it shook the building and Laumonier sigh heavily. Then another door closed much less forcefully, and a machine roared to live outside._

_The trap door stairs contraption opened._

_“Alright,” Piper said as she trudged up the stairs. “Looks like it’s your lucky fuckin’ day, magic thing. ‘Cause I’m pissed off and feeling spiteful.”_

_Noah wasn’t sure how this made it his lucky day._

_Piper sauntered over to him, twirling a shining silver key ring around her wrist. She unlocked the cage._

_“Get out before I change my mind.”_

_Noah scrambled to the door. Piper stepped out of his way and grabbed him by the collar of his tunic as he climbed out and stood. He turned to look at her with wide, frightened eyes._

_“Relax,” Piper scoffed. “I’m not gonna do anything to you. I just need you to do something for me if I’m gonna let you go. You’re gonna lead me to wherever the hell you came from.”_

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________

_Eighteen year old Noah Czerny was proficient in the art of eavesdropping. In fact, he was fairly certain it was a skill the womb had equipped him with; he couldn’t remember a time that he’d been caught, and he practiced_ frequently _._

_Partly, probably, it was the fact of his being a sylph, which entailed, if he happened to be flying, that he was devoid of the mechanics to make any incriminating sound._

_Now, for example: he hovered noiselessly just outside the thick, oak door to his parents’ study, left ear pressed to the wood, eyes on high alert for any handmaids, or worse, his sister (Adele would not intentionally draw attention to Noah’s snooping, but she was quite a speak-now-think-later sort, and so she was rather likely to demand, probably loudly, that Noah explain himself to her)._

_For the moment, at least, he was in the clear._

_As his gaze focused softly on an ivy-strewn trellis beyond the arched window at the end of the hall, he heard from inside the room, “—connection to Akasha was damaged when he was taken. He flickers in and out of visibility if he isn’t drawing energy from me, and it makes him dangerously weak. We’ve kept it up for years, but…”_

_Noah did_ not _appreciate the sound of this ‘but’._

_His mother was the one speaking; he knew both because it was her voice and because, being that she was the one who had given Noah his own life force, she was the only one capable of sharing with him the energy to keep him stable. As she’d just stated, she’d been siphoning it to him for years. Ever since he’d been kidnapped and the Wood had forgotten him._

‘But’ what?

_As a fainter voice echoed from the room, Noah pressed ever closer._

_“I presume you are familiar with the king of Caeruleum?”_

_A brief pause. Then, Noah’s father: “Familiar how, exactly? We know of King Niall, of course, but we aren’t on personal terms. We haven’t met.”_

_A_ click-clack _sound resonated from Noah’s right; somewhere near the grand room. It was suspiciously similar to the sharp clattering of a pair of Adele’s signature heels, and he pushed away from the door, alarms raised._

_The sound did not cease. In fact, it only grew closer._

_“Dammit,”_ _Noah mouthed, eyes peeled for his sister to round the corner into the hall._

_Sure enough, no more than a moment later, there she was—baby blue pumps causing a ruckus and clashing wildly with her bubblegum pink slip dress. “There you are!” she called, and then, before he could raise a finger to his lips, “What are you doing?”_

“Shhh!” _Noah insisted, holding out a hand to signal that she halt before motioning for her to remove her shoes._

 _Adele held out_ both _of her hands in surrender before bending to unfasten the straps on her heels, slipping them gracefully from her feet and hooking them over her fingers to pad the rest of the way over to Noah. He wished she’d just_ fly _, but this would be quiet enough, he supposed._

_“Okay, but actually,” she whispered once she’d reached him, quizzically raising one perfectly arched brow. “What are you doing?”_

_“Listening,” Noah whispered back, annoyed. As though it weren’t obvious. “Hush. I’ve already missed something now, I’m sure.”_

_Adele rolled her violet eyes but said nothing more, ushering Noah back toward the door._

_When Noah pressed his ear to the wood again, Adele did the same. The mystery woman was speaking once more, voice airy and soft._

_“—about what can be done. He deals in the impossible. He has a strict clientele, and he is an incredibly busy man, so I would suggest that you act soon. You haven’t much time.”_

_Noah locked his gaze with his sister’s._

_“Time for what?” she wondered aloud._

_Noah simply shook his head._

_“How long do you think it could take?” their mother asked. Her voice was strained, as though she was fighting back tears. Noah was not a fan of that._

_“There isn’t any way to be sure,” the stranger told her. “The sooner you contact him, the better.”_

_“But—”_

_“I do apologize. Unfortunately there’s nothing more I can do. I am only a messenger.”_

_“We understand,” Noah’s father assured the woman. “We appreciate the advice more than you know. And the warning, of course. Our children are—they’re everything to us. If anything were to happen to Noah...well. Here to see it or not, I’d never forgive myself.”_

‘If anything were to happen to Noah’?

 _Adele cast him another very pointed_ look.

 _Noah’s mother had, in fact, been holding back tears. He knew this, because when she spoke again, she was crying. “It isn’t on_ you, _Nathaniel. It would never be your burden to forgive. I can’t—not my baby—not because—”_

_“Oh, my darling.” There was shuffling, and Noah imagined that he was pulling her into his arms. “We’re going to work it out. He’ll be alright. They both will. But we can’t run from this.”_

_Noah lowered himself to the floor, beginning to tremble, and flickered with a little effort into his visible form, slipping his hand into his sister’s._

_She squeezed. Noah could feel the fear beginning to slowly roll off her in waves._

_“You cannot run,” the mystery woman agreed, “but you can_ prepare. _Get your affairs in order. Leave your children with not just an estate, but a home. One that will sustain them long after you’ve gone. Save your son. You have the capability and the means. Now you must act. Quickly.”_

 _Noah was no longer sure which sentences to single out. The conversation had become rapidly and vastly overwhelming._ ‘Get your affairs in order’? ‘Long after you’ve gone’? ‘Save your son’?

_“Noah?” Adele breathed. For once in her life, she didn’t appear as a glimmering facade, wise and mischievous beyond her years. She was simply Noah’s younger sister—nervous and scared and as confused as he was._

_“I don’t know,” Noah told her, in response to a question unasked. His bare feet no longer registered the sensation of the cold, marble floor beneath them, and he had to look down to be sure they hadn’t begun to disappear. They hadn’t, which meant a panic attack was building._

_“Are they…”_

Going to die?

_Noah shook his head—not in response, but to clear his thoughts. “I don’t know,” he said again._

_But he did. He’d heard more of the conversation than Adele had, and even she’d pieced it together well enough._ ‘After you’ve gone’ _didn’t mean on a trip. They both knew the implications of those words._

_Adele put a hand over her mouth to stifle a sob. With the other, she gripped Noah’s more tightly._

_Their mother was still crying, but it had slowed now to an occasional sniffle, and when she spoke, her voice was as even and full of conviction as Noah had ever heard it. “We’ll send word to King Niall at once. Thank you for all you’ve done. It is difficult not to be compelled to fault the messenger, but I do hope you’ll forgive me if I’ve come across as anything less than infinitely grateful. If there is any way for us to repay you, please, allow us to do so.”_

_“No repayment will be necessary,” the stranger assured her. A chair creaked. Was she standing to leave? “While I never enjoy presenting such dreadful news, my gift is a burden only relieved by handing off each parcel of information to its rightful owner. You’ve done me a service today in helping to relieve that burden. My condolences that it will be so heavy for you to bear.”_

_“Can you find your way out?” Noah’s father asked. More chairs creaking. Fabric swishing._

_“Oh, I’ll manage. Take care.”_

_Noah jolted, his body finally catching up to his brain’s realization that she was headed for the door, and yanked Adele to the left of the study and into a linen closet, shutting it as soundlessly as he was able behind them._

_There was a crack between the hinges just large enough for him to peek through, and he squinted, pressed as closely as he could manage without snapping his nose._

_“What do you see?” Adele demanded in a hushed whisper._

_As the study swung open, the first thing in Noah’s line of sight was hair. Yards of it, it seemed, billowing out around a petite, thin frame. It was silvery-blonde and fell in waves around the woman’s shoulders and back, cloaking her in nearly her entirety._

_When he cast his eyes lower he could just make out a patchwork skirt, earthy tones intermingling and billowing around the woman’s legs. They twisted and twirled in a way they shouldn’t have, and before Noah knew it, the woman was turning to full-on face the closet door._

_He stopped breathing._

_Her eyes were black as coal, but everything else about her was so pale white the thought flitted through Noah’s mind that maybe he was borne of her own flesh. Then,_ maybe she’s dead. 

_Before he could contemplate much further, though, her white-less gaze met Noah’s narrowed one through the crack in the door._

_“I’m terribly sorry, child,” she told him. And then she turned to go._

________________________________________________________________________________________________________

_Nineteen-year-old Noah Czerny was sitting on a stone bench against the fountain in the heart of the courtyard, staring up at the cloudless, blue sky, listening to the calming sound of the beautiful ivory griffin pouring water from a sleek silver pitcher into the fountain basin below._

_The griffin stood tall on its back legs, silver trimmed wings reaching for the sun, head and silver beak held regal and proud. When Noah was a child, before his own wings were strong enough to carry him, he used to sneak out into the garden and climb up the griffin’s curled lion’s tail to sit between its strong shoulders, imagining it was his noble steed carrying him, a brave and honorable warrior, to battle against the forces of terrible evil that threatened the Wildwood. Now, the ivory beast simply stood as a quiet guardian of the courtyard and a somber reminder of the innocence of Noah’s youth._

_“What happened to us, old friend?” Noah sighed, leaning back to look up at the griffin, its silver eyes not paying him any mind, ever looking gallantly forward. “How did we get here, huh?” The griffin said nothing. “Never were much of a talker.” He got to his feet._

_He remembered the griffin being much taller when he was a child. Now that he was older he didn’t have to crane his neck so much to look at it, and he could reach up and brush the tips of his fingers along the smooth, beautifully carved feathers of the creature’s wings. He stroked along the griffin’s side down to it’s haunch and pinched the tuft of its tail before giving it’s rump a gentle pat. Then he spread his translucent sylph wings and lifted off the ground, landing gracefully on the back of the beast. He petted the top of its head and then reached back to run the palms of his hands along the arms of its wings, letting his head fall back and his eyes fall closed._

_For a moment he pretended he was that playful child again. That his feet only reached to the griffin’s chest rather than hovering just above the water below. That he could picture the griffin springing to life and carrying him high above the well groomed trees of the courtyard and the sparkling roof of the Czerny estate, off to save the world. That his parents were not ever going to die and he had nothing to worry about but being home before dinner. The griffin did not have to worry about its parents dying or being home for dinner. The griffin only ever had to worry about bad weather tarnishing its brilliant silver pitcher._

_Noah took a deep breath._

_The sun was bright and hot, and he could feel sweat beading on his forehead and the back of his neck. The griffin remained cool and stoic._

_Noah felt a bit lightheaded. He pretended it was probably just because he was overheating. Young, innocent Noah had nothing to worry about._

_The griffin was starting to spin._

_It took Noah a moment to realize that the griffin wasn’t actually spinning, and, in fact, it wasn’t just the griffin, but everything around him. He blinked in hopes that the dizziness would pass, but it only got worse. He swore softly and lowered his forehead to the cool ivory of the griffin’s neck, closing his eyes._

_“Not now,” he breathed, forcibly relaxing his arms and legs, trusting the griffin to hold him entirely. “Come on, not now. I don’t know where mom is.” He felt dangerously close to falling asleep. This was not good._

_Noah scrubbed a hand over his face and started to attempt a gentle, wing-assisted descent from the back of the statue to the ground, but his wings were already unmoving and utterly useless and he instead he tumbled to the cobblestone path scraping up his elbows and the palms of his hands before they started to flicker out of visibility._

“Shit,” _he hissed, resisting the urge to just lie down and rest. He put his forehead against the ground and stretched his arms out in front of him. “Mom!”_

_His mother did not respond. She was most certainly out of earshot somewhere in the house._

_Noah pushed himself unsteadily to his feet._

_The lightheadedness had passed, but now he felt like he hadn’t slept in a week and like his body was too weak to hold him up, let alone cross the distance between the fountain and the Czerny mansion. His hands and knees were shaking terribly and he felt a little short of breath. He watched his arms turn transparent and wispy._

_“Mom!” He cried again, knowing that no one would hear him. “Dad! Adelia!”_

_He looked back to the ivory beast, wishing desperately for it to break free of its eternal pitcher-pouring and just carry him to where he needed to go. When he was a child it might have. He started forward._

_With each step he grew weaker, using all that was left of his draining energy just to make his legs work. It felt like miles, like days, like he would never make it._

_When he finally reached the back door of the house, he used all the strength he could muster to open it and call for his mother one last time before collapsing in the foyer and falling unconscious._

_Noah woke up some time later in his bed, surrounded by the familiar faces of his parents and sister, and an unfamiliar face belonging to a man he had never met. He started to sit up, but Adele put a gentle hand against his now solid chest and pushed him back down, shaking her head, a concerned and almost sad expression on her face._

_The strange man greeted Noah with a smile. He was tall and fair, with dark hair that fell to just below his chin and strange, mercurial eyes, shifting colors from metallic silvers to deep blues and vibrant purples to match Noah’s own. He had three scars on each side of his neck, midway between his collar and his jawline, and his fingers were slightly webbed. He was dressed in rather plain, muted clothing and wore a seafoam green jewel on an elegant, silver chain around his neck._

_“Hello, Noah,” the stranger said in a deep, yet somehow calming voice. “My name is Niall Lynch. I’m here to help you.”_

_Noah had heard so many stories of the Lynches when he was younger. The sirens of the underwater kingdom of Caeruleum. He had watched from the safety of the forest as they emerged from the waves, their glorious tails glistening brilliantly in the sunlight. This man, the patriarch of the Lynch dynasty, was not exactly what Noah would have expected if he had been told he would wake up with a king in his bedroom. That did not, however, make him any less intimidating._

_“Hi—uh, I mean—hello,” Noah greeted him shakily. “It’s nice to meet you.”_

_The king only smiled again and hushed Noah. “Save your strength,” he said. “And when you can, go back to sleep.”_

_Noah thought this was a strange request. He must have been sleeping for ages judging by his family’s expressions, and he wasn’t entirely sure what good sleeping more would do, but when he looked to his mother she nodded reassuringly, so he nodded too and turned onto his side. He fell asleep easily._

_When he woke for the second time, Noah was alone in his bedroom with Niall Lynch. He blinked and rubbed his eyes. The room looked a little strange and hazy, as if his vision wasn’t focusing correctly, but when he looked at Niall he could see perfectly clearly._

_“Hello again,” Niall said, standing from a chair next to Noah’s bed that hadn’t been there before. He was holding something bright and shimmering in his left hand._

_“Hi,” Noah responded softly. He felt like he was in slow motion. Or maybe everything around him was moving too fast. “What is that?”_

_“Ah,” Niall said with an almost sad smile. “This—” He stretched his arm out toward Noah, turning his hand to hold the object on his open palm. “—This is what’s going to fix you.”_

_The thing was a small orb that resembled a large marble. It might have been made of glass, and on the inside were what Noah could only describe as molten flames licking up the rounded walls. It burned so brightly that it cast a soft, orange glow onto Niall’s skin._

_“Can you guess where it came from?” the king asked, raising an eyebrow._

_Noah considered for a moment. “The only thing I know that makes fire like that is the Red Mountain,” he said._

_“Very good.” Niall nodded approvingly. “I’ve taken to calling it a Soul Stone. Seems fitting, as it sort of embodies the soul of the volcano, and it will also keep your soul strong.”_

_“Where did you get it?” Noah asked curiously, pushing himself up onto his elbow._

_“That’s a very long story,” Niall laughed._

_“I have time.”_

_“Unfortunately, I do not.” Niall smiled somewhat fondly. “You see, I have a task to complete, and it can only be done as long as we are both asleep, so my time is rather limited.”_

_Noah was confused by this. It seemed to him that they were both very much awake._

_“Wait,” he said, shaking his head. “What do you mean we’re asleep?”_

_“Oh, forgive me,” Niall chuckled softly. “I forget that not everyone is as attuned to dreaming as I am. You and I are currently in a dream. My dream. I’d ask you to remove your tunic if you don’t mind.”_

_“I don’t understand.” Noah hesitated for a moment before disrobing. He didn’t feel like he was dreaming. Everything he was touching felt solid and real._

_“Another very long story for another time,” Niall said. There was a tone of sadness in his voice that hadn’t been there before. “Or perhaps another storyteller. This might feel a bit unpleasant.”_

_Noah watched nervously as Niall held the strange marble between his thumb and his forefinger for a moment, examining it fondly, almost wistfully, before sitting down on the edge of the bed. He let his empty hand hover over Noah’s bare sternum for a moment._

_“Close your eyes,” he said. Noah did, and took a deep breath. “Very good,” Niall praised._

_Noah kept his eyes closed the entire time, not daring to even so much as peek as the king did his work. He felt a slight burning sensation at first, which he assumed was the marble touching his skin. Although Niall hadn’t been holding it as if it were hot to the touch, Noah felt for some reason that it had to have been._

_The burning was followed by pressure, a slight stab of pain, and then it was over._

_“You can open your eyes now,” Niall told him._

_When he opened his eyes, Noah was alone in his room. He was lying on his side just as he had been when he’d fallen asleep, the blanket drawn up to his chin. He sat up slowly and cast his eyes downward. He was still wearing his tunic. He took it off to examine the strange, fiery marble that rested, half-exposed in the center of his chest. He brushed his fingertips across it’s smooth surface, smiling to himself at the gentle warmth of it and the soft, orange glow it cast on his skin. He felt as strong and filled with life as he had when he’d ridden the ivory griffin into battle._

________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Twenty-four year old Noah Czerny ran. 

He wasn’t running _to_ or _from_ anything; simply running for running’s sake. He’d been doing it as long as he could remember—zipping between the trees populating the dense forests of the Wood so quickly that, had he been human, he would surely have tripped over a root or snared himself on a branch or possibly even run face-first into a trunk.

But he was not a human, and so he ran, feet pounding the earth hard enough to pack down the dirt in his wake, leaving a path that resembled one cleared and smoothed by the hooves of beasts over the course of years in merely one fell swoop. He ran swiftly and precisely, leaves and needles and vines whipping past him in a blur, rabbits leaping out of his way and foxes racing alongside him to rival his speed.

He tore past thickets of huckleberries and holly, waterfalls of honeysuckle and brambles of wildseed, evergreens and oaks and willows and sequoias countless times taller and wider than all the rest, all coexisting harmoniously in their strange and enchanted ecosystem.

Noah ran until his heart beat so rapidly in his chest that it was all he could do to catch his breath around it, forcing him to slow long enough to allow it to settle until he could no longer feel it in his teeth, and then he ran some more. He ran until his fingers were tingling at his sides and his ears were aching from the whipping of the wind. He ran until he could no longer feel the bruising bite of pebbles under the heels and balls of his feet. 

By the time he reached the river, miles east of his home, Noah was both parched and famished. He splashed merrily into the water, cupping his hands to drink before plucking a gossamer orange from a bush on the bank, peeling back the spun silk webbing and sinking his teeth into the flesh of the fruit. It was tart and tangy and delicious, and Noah closed his eyes, reveling in every sensation he was currently experiencing. 

Having been beneath such a thick canopy in the forest, he had been blanketed from the sun, but now, in the open water, it shone down upon him with such intensity that he felt known by its collective rays. He loved his home—truly, he did—but there were times when the grandeur of it all got to be too much. Noah would be the last to deny his own dramatic flair, and he’d never claim not to belong to the Estate, but sometimes the ivory statues and marble pillars and bright, bountiful gardens all felt a bit staged, as though he was playing make-believe in a dollhouse that he would one day grow out of use for. He loved it out here, in the open wilderness of the Wood, differently than anywhere else. 

He took his time basking in the river, lying back in the water’s gentle rapids and allowing them to lull him to peace, soothing his pinkened shoulders and beading in his fine, blond hair. He had no true grasp of how long he spent that way, but by the time he dragged himself out onto the far side of the bank, the sun was simmering from yellow into gold and beginning to flirt with the treetops along the hills surrounding the Wildwood. 

Still in no hurry, Noah wrung out the legs of his pants, fully intent on traversing further into the forest. He had plenty of time before it became truly dark, and even then, he knew his way home well enough to make the trek without the aid of his eyes.

The sight that befell him just beyond the treeline, however, halted him in his tracks. 

Lying on the ground, entirely devoid of clothing and covered head to toe in blood, was a boy.

Or, rather, what was left of one.

The sight was gruesome enough to make Noah dizzy, and there wasn’t much that could accomplish such a feat these days—not after what had come of his parents in the end.

The boy—or, _man_ , Noah supposed; he was lying face-down but he looked in length to be taller than Noah was by a fair margin—was torn nearly entirely open from his shoulder blades to his hips. The lacerations were so full of blood that he couldn’t tell how deep they went, but he _could_ tell they’d been made fairly recently; the blood hadn’t even begun to coagulate in the places it was most prevalent, and it was only just drying across his skin.

Noah’s head spun.

Approximately one thousand questions flitted through his mind at lightning speed, but before he could untangle them from one another or settle on the most prominent to resolve, the unthinkable happened.

The man coughed.

 _Oh, fuck. He’s_ alive?

“Um,” Noah said, which prompted the man to jolt and then cry out, hoarsely, in pain. “Sorry, sorry! I—how—what _happened_ to you?”

Realistically, Noah knew he should be concerned with the probability of whatever it had been happening to _him_ as well, but he couldn’t find it within himself to flee. Instead, he crouched next to the man’s head to find a pair of yellowed, bloodshot eyes, irises full black, gently tapered ears, and three scars across the side of his neck.

The man opened his mouth to speak, but all that came out was blood. Then he made a harsh, wet sound, as though he was choking, and his eyes rolled back in his head as he erupted into violent and terrible tremors.

Noah’s chest tightened in horror.

Without allowing himself a moment to think, _especially_ not about the fact that his marble hadn’t been functioning at quite full capacity today, he flickered into his full sylph form, slipped both arms beneath the seizing man’s stomach, summoned a strong enough wind to easily carry them both, and flew.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We actually updated when we planned to! Surprised? (So am I.) We love kudos, comments, and you!  
> Thanks for reading!  
> -Em & Jess


	4. Four of Wands

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The tree was awake—Adam could feel it as he awoke himself—and it was gleefully soaking in the sweet warmth of sunrise. There was no chance Adam was getting back to sleep.

Adam Parrish was asleep. 

For a drus, being asleep often meant being wrapped up in the trunk of his heart tree, vines and branches winding around and interlocking with arms and legs and torso, cradling him in a bed of twigs and leaves, the soft sunlight of the early morning creeping in through the twisting roots that made up the bulk of the tree and stretched out into long, fruit-bearing branches. The tree was awake—Adam could feel it as he awoke himself—and it was gleefully soaking in the sweet warmth of sunrise. There was no chance Adam was getting back to sleep. 

A proud and cheerful raven trilled its morning greeting as it soared over the farm. Adam stirred, the vines and roots slowly, almost reluctantly releasing him, as if they missed him before he was even out of their reach. He stretched and blinked the sleep from his eyes. 

Artemus was already at work in the orchards. Adam could hear him quietly humming to himself as he did, ever more fond of the early hours than his younger companion, waking eagerly before the sun. 

Adam emerged from his tree. 

The sunrise had draped the fruit farm in a blanket of almost dreamlike golden light. The trees bearing fruits of all different shapes and colors cast strange and beautiful shadows on the farmland where rooted plants grew toward the sky and shrubs sat stocky and proud and glowing with sunlight. Birds sang joyfully, perched in the branches of the trees, and frogs chirped and splashed in the water of the nearby stream. Adam almost understood why Artemus loved waking up so early.

“Good morning,” his mentor greeted him cheerfully. “I was starting to wonder if you would sleep all day.” 

Adam scrubbed a hand over his face and plucked a few stray leaves from the course, burlap-like material of his trousers. “’Morning,” he said, yawning into his hand and waving groggily at Artemus. “How long have you been up?” 

“Oh, you know,” Artemus replied with a shrug of his shoulders, looking thoughtfully up at the sky as if to find the answer there. He was, perhaps, considering the position of the sun now as compared to when he arose. “A little while.” 

Adam smiled fondly and shook his head. 

“Did Blue already head home?” he asked as he started for the rickety old barn that housed a myriad of gardening and farming tools (and a now vacant makeshift bedroom of hay bales and tree stumps). 

“Yes,” Artemus answered with a nod. “She left as early as she could. Said she doesn’t trust Henry alone at the bakery on Sundays. She didn’t want to wake you.” 

“That’s alright.” Adam rather clumsily tossed a few tools into a wheelbarrow and brought it out of the barn. “We’ll see her again next week, yeah?” 

“We will,” Artemus confirmed. “You should tend to the royal plums, they’re looking a bit unruly.” 

“They always do,” Adam sighed. “They have a mind of their own, I’m telling you.” 

The two of them laughed at this. It would have been more unusual for them to assume the royal plum trees, or any of the trees in the orchard, for that matter,  _ did not _ have a mind of their own. 

“Come find me when you finish with them,” Artemus said as he turned toward a freshly tilled patch of soil. “I have new moon fruit seeds to sow.” 

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

_ Ten-year-old Adam Parrish stood, still, half concealing himself behind his honeyapple tree, silently observing the scene playing out in the grove before him. _

_ Skipping merrily down the soil to the right of his row, there was a girl. She was small in stature and clothed in various, multicolored swathes of fabric that Adam presumed were all separate dresses. Her hair was black and shiny and stuck up from a multitude of clips and ties all around her head in a way that made her look a little like a bird.  _

_ Behind her, a woman followed closely. She was wearing her colors all in one dress, floor-length and cotton and fading from blue to purple to white. She, unlike the girl, was not merrily skipping. She was shuffling a little, head down, hands wringing before her as though she was nervous or afraid.  _

Maybe she’s the one that’s dying,  _ Adam considered. The girl certainly didn’t look to be in danger of perishing anytime soon. But then again, all sorts of invisible ailments befell humans. It wasn’t impossible, he supposed.  _

_ “Where, Mom?” the girl inquired, pausing to spin on her heel and face the woman—her mother, apparently.  _

_ The woman raised her head, cuffing the girl gently under the chin, and nodded forward. “Just a little further, baby. We’re almost there.” _

_ The girl turned back and carried on her skipping, throwing in a quiet, off-tune whistling to match her leaps and landings.  _

_ A bee buzzed next to Adam’s hearing ear and he batted it away, intent on keeping his focus. He’d never seen a human up so close before. He wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting, but he didn’t think it was this. She looked just like he did, only with more of whatever it was that made her human. _

_ “What are these?” she asked, throwing a slight jump into her skip and bounding up to pluck a low-hanging honeyapple from a neighboring tree. _

_ Adam felt his heart skip. “Don’t,” he pleaded in a breath. If he interfered—if he made any form of advance—he would name himself founder of a dying human. He may have been unusually mature for his age, but having been forced to grow up quickly didn’t mean he was anywhere near ready for that sort of responsibility. Still, though. The girl queried on. _

_ “Why do they have this...shell?” She tapped against the honeyapple’s glassy peel with her fingernail, frowning, and rolled it over in her palm. _

_ She was going to find the soft spot. Adam just knew it. And if she  _ wasn’t _ the one dying— _

Crack!  _ The girl’s thumb pressed into the apple just around the stem and the peeling shattered away, revealing the sticky, golden fae honey beneath. It dripped onto her fingers and down her hand, rivulets beading across her wrist and seeping into the fabric of her sleeve. _

_ “Oh!” she exclaimed, delighted, eyes flitting up to meet her mother’s. And then, because no human in history had ever been able to leave well enough alone, she began to raise her hand to her mouth. _

_ “Stop!” _

_ The girl and her mother both jolted. _

_ Adam stepped out from behind his tree, breathing heavy with nerves. “You can’t eat that,” he said, gesturing needlessly to the apple. “If you’re hungry I can find you something else, but that’s faerie fruit. It’ll poison you.” _

_ The girl was clearly startled by Adam’s presence, but she only stilled for a moment, wide eyes locked on his, before breaking into a grin and swiping her small, pink tongue out to collect the honey coating her skin.  _

_ Adam froze. His mind both blanked and raced at once. Why wasn’t her mother reacting? As a matter of fact,  _ she  _ was smiling, too, sly and somewhat amused, as though she was privy to some secret Adam hadn’t been clued in on.  _

_ “Bluebird,” she prompted, playful, nodding her head in Adam’s direction. “You’re terrifying the poor boy.” _

Bluebird  _ rolled her eyes, bit a chunk out of the apple’s flesh, and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “Relax. I’m only  _ half  _ human. I’m here to see my dad.” _

_ “To see your…” Adam blinked. Did this mean no one was dying? That would be pleasant news. “Um. I’ve—I’ve never seen you before. Around here.” _

_ “Yeah. That’s ‘cause I’ve never been here. C’mon, mom!” _

_ Adam watched, still unsure how to process precisely what was happening, as the girl took her mother by the hand, tossed the honeyapple on the ground, and took off skipping again.  _

_ All the drus and dryads on the fruit farm would be waking soon; Adam was only up so atypically early because a vivid dream about a meeting with a white-haired stranger had beckoned him gently into consciousness.  _

_ He was glad for it now, because, had he still been sleeping, he would have missed what happened next.  _

_ The girl and her mother slowed to a halt at  _ Artemus’s  _ tree.  _

_ It was not a hesitation. Not a pause meant for reevaluating. It was a full  _ stop _ , and no sooner than they’d planted their feet was the woman’s hand rising to rest against the rough bark of the tree’s trunk.  _

_ Artemus’s tree was a great thing, massive and ancient in comparison to those that were still practically saplings with only fifty or so years of growth, such as Adam’s. It twisted and stretched far above every other in its own row or those to either side, and Adam suspected it may be the largest in the entire grove. Hanging ripe and low from its branches were a cascade of golden snap pears, already shimmering in the barely-there light of the rising sun.  _

_ The girl plucked one of these as well—a much more reasonable handful for her petite fingers—but made no move to taste it; she simply marveled at its radiant skin.  _

_ Dwarfed by the enormity of the tree, she and her mother, Adam thought, could easily have been mistaken for pixies.  _

_ The woman had not removed her hand from the bark.  _

What do they want with Artemus?  _ Adam wondered. He almost felt as though he should intervene—inform them that they were in the wrong place or at least signal Artemus to their arrival somehow. But perhaps  _ he  _ was the one in the dark here. Maybe Artemus knew something about the girl’s father.  _

_ Finally, slowly, the tree began to stir to life.  _

_ It wasn’t a presentation Adam witnessed often—Artemus typically rose long before he did—so it was truly something of an experience on the rare occasion that he was graced by the sight.  _

_ The branches stretched and unfurled, a few miniature pears falling to the forest floor, and the tree’s core seemed to vibrate as though physically shaking awake. _

_ “Artemus?” the woman asked. _

_ This startled Adam slightly. He still hadn’t truly expected that she knew who Artemus was. _

_ The tree calmed, swaying only gently now, and a moment later, Artemus was released from its depths, clad in his farmers’ trousers.  _

_ For a long, long moment, he was quiet. He seemed to drink the woman in as she did the same, regarding one another as though neither believed that the other was real. _

_ The girl stood just behind her mother, partially obscured and, for the moment, entirely overlooked. _

_ Finally, Artemus muttered something, too hushed with awe for Adam to hear. _

_ Slowly, the woman brought her palm to cup his cheek.  _

_ The tenderness in the gesture was so much that Adam felt compelled to avert his eyes. He didn’t, though; he couldn’t afford to miss a moment of their interaction, lest he lose sight of whatever vital piece of information he needed to tie together the loose ends. Who were these people? Who were they to  _ Artemus?

_ A moment later, as though only just remembering her presence, the woman reached behind herself and loosely grasped her daughter’s wrist, coaxing her out of hiding. “This is Blue,” Adam heard her say, which, he supposed, explained the nickname from before. “Your daughter.” _

_ Drus were funnily powerful creatures. Especially those as seasoned in their magic as Artemus was. When the grove stilled, Adam knew it was Artemus’s doing, intentional or otherwise.  _

_ It was less a ceasing of movement than the sudden notion that there’d never been any in the first place. Not a leaf trembled, because there was no longer any crisp, morning breeze. No birds chirped and dove between sanctioned farm rows, because, in that moment, none could have taken flight had they so wished. Adam himself was entirely unmoving, not a breath leaving his lungs. _

_ And then, as quickly as it had begun, it was over.  _

Your daughter.

_ The words echoed in Adam’s mind on an unending loop, foreign and impossible. Artemus couldn’t have a daughter. _

_ But Adam watched as Artemus reached out to tuck a lock of the girl’s unruly hair behind her ear, as familiar as if he’d been doing it for years, she as comfortable as if she’d been letting him. “Hello, Blue,” he intoned. “It’s lovely to meet you.” _

_ “You, too,” Blue told him, grinning shyly. _

_ Adam’s heartbeat thudded in his deaf ear.  _

_ “Maura,” Artemus said, addressing Blue’s mother now. “I don’t understand. Why did you wait so long?” _

_ “This is a dangerous place,” the woman—Maura—replied, wistful and sad, a beautiful, bittersweet cadence to her voice. “Too dangerous for a baby, Artemus, you know that. Half fae or not, she  _ is _ half human, too. I wasn’t going to bring her here and then keep her from you until she was old enough to fare on her own. I had to wait until you could build a real relationship with her. I couldn’t let you spend her entire childhood wondering.” _

_ “Oh,” Artemus chuckled, also wistful and sad. “I already have. Though not about her, I will give you that. I don’t suppose you’re staying?” _

_ “Maybe long enough for a cup of tea.” Maura squeezed her daughter’s shoulder inquisitively. “What do you think, sweetheart? Maybe Artemus could show us around a little. Would you like that?” _

_ “Yeah!” Blue responded enthusiastically, skirts twirling around her knees. _

_ “Of course,” Artemus agreed easily. “But I’d like to introduce you to someone first, if he’s awake. Adam?” _

_ For a moment, Adam’s brain wouldn’t register that he’d been spoken to. When it did, he stepped fully out into the neatly tilled path between Artemus’s row and his own and cleared his throat. “I believe we’ve already met.” _

_ Artemus’s brow creased. “Have you?” _

_ “Oh, yes,” Maura responded for him. “He caught us on our way in, trying to keep Blue from poisoning herself. Sweet boy. Adam, was it?” _

_ “Yes, ma’am,” Adam confirmed, unsure whether he should move closer. His bare feet twitched against the cool dirt, grounding him, right hand gripping his left forearm. “Pleasure.” _

_ “And so polite,” Maura laughed. “The pleasure’s all mine, honey. How do you know Artemus?” _

How do  _ you  _ know him?  _ Adam wanted to shoot back. Instead, he took a deep breath and answered, “He’s been something of a mentor to me most of my life.” _

_ “Ah, don’t be modest.” Artemus excused himself from Maura and Blue and met Adam on the path to stand behind him and ruffle his hair, a solid presence that Adam hadn’t known he needed but was grateful for all the same. “If anything, it’s  _ you  _ who’s taught  _ me  _ what truly matters.” Then, to Maura: “I took Adam under my wing, I suppose you could say, when he was still nearly in swaddling clothes. His past is...not a topic of discussion, so I would appreciate your refrain from questioning it. We’re partners, he and I. We keep this grove running smoothly together, don’t we, Adam?” _

_ Adam could feel a light blush spreading to his cheeks, but straightened his back and held his chin high. He was proud of the work he did on the farm, and prouder still of Artemus’s recognition for it. “Yes, sir. We sure try our hardest.”  _

_ “That we do. Now, enough with the formalities. I believe the ladies requested tea.” _

_ ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ _

_ Sixteen-year-old Adam Parrish was lying in on his back on a rather small, red-checkered picnic blanket beside Blue Sargent. His hands were resting on his chest, fingers drumming against his ribs as he watched the leaves of the trees above them dancing gracefully in the cool, gentle breeze. It was Adam’s day off from his usual dealings with the farm, and the two of them were enjoying the beautiful afternoon by the river.  _

_ Blue was sitting cross-legged behind a robust wicker picnic basket that she said usually lived on top of the refrigerator at 300 Fox Way. She was unloading all sorts of goods that had traveled with her from the home of the psychics and setting them out on the blanket in front of her.  _

_ “Mom made the little PB&Js,” she said as she set down a plate of perfectly square sandwiches on bread that reminded Adam of the soft, fluffy looking clouds that drifted overhead. “I made the scones and the cinnamon rolls. The scones are good, they’re blueberry, but I think I might have put a little too much cinnamon in the cinnamon rolls.”  _

_ “They look great to me,” Adam said as he rolled over and propped himself up on his elbows to examine them.  _

_ “Trade me,” Blue said, pulling apart the cinnamon rolls and gesturing toward the stack of large, smooth-skinned fruits lying in the grass beside the picnic blanket. _

_ Adam sat up and picked a winemelon from the top of the stack, gently rolling it in Blue’s direction. She caught it and set it aside. _

_ “What do you think of Moonlight Bakery? That one was Orla’s idea, but I don’t hate it.” Blue handed a cinnamon roll to Adam and picked up another to take a bite for herself. “ Oh, god, definitely too much cinnamon. Or how about Sargent’s Sweet Shoppe? Is it too pretentious to use my own name like that? There’s also Psychic Confections.” _

_ “I think they’re all good,” Adam said. “I don’t mind the cinnamon.”  _

_ “Well that’s not helpful at all,” Blue sighed, rolling her eyes at him. She set down her pastry to retrieve a large kitchen knife from the basket, pulling the melon closer to her. “Which one’s your favorite?”  _

_ “I don’t know,” Adam replied with a shrug. “I like them all.”  _

_ “Ugh, whatever, you’re the worst.” Blue shook her head and sunk the knife into the melon, cutting it in half in one, swift motion. The severed halves fell from her hands, displaying the beautiful champagne center of the fruit, loose seeds falling to the blanket. “So, how do we do this?”  _

_ “You just eat it,” Adam said with a laugh. “It’s better if you process them into faerie wine, of course, but that’s not exactly easy or quick, so we’re just gonna have to settle for doing it this way.”  _

_ Blue had already cut one of the melon halves into slices and bitten into the soft, sweet, perfectly ripe fruit.  _

_ “Oh wow.” Her eyes lit up as a bit of melon juice trickled down her chin. She handed a slice to Adam. “This is incredible. Is this what faerie wine tastes like?”  _

_ “I don’t know,” Adam answered. “I’ve never had it.”  _

_ Blue looked surprised. “You haven’t?”  _

_ “Like I said, not an easy or quick process,” Adam said softly, a sort of heaviness in his voice that hadn’t been there before. “Which means it’s not cheap either. Real hard to get your hands on if you don’t have money or make it yourself. And we don’t have what you need to distill it or whatever.” He shrugged and took a bite of the slice in his hand. “So we just eat the melons.”  _

_ “Take it straight from the source,” Blue laughed. “I like it.” _

_ A few hours, a few winemelons, and a few overly cinnamoned cinnamon rolls later Adam and Blue were both starting to feel the effects of the winemelon sugar. Blue had gotten up, taking one of her mother’s peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with her, and kicked her shoes off to sit on the bank of the river and put her feet in the water.  _

_ Adam laid down on his stomach, his chin propped up on the heel of his hand, quietly watching Blue as she waved hello to the minnows and giggled at them darting around her toes. Adam thought about how pretty she was in her funny sort of way. She was dressed, as she always was, in about a hundred different fabrics, her knit leggings rolled up to her knees, and her dark hair was pulled back in a wild ponytail, the bronze skin of her neck and face soaking in the rays of sunlight that crept through the forest canopy. Adam wondered if maybe this was the fae in her, Artemus’s blood giving her the ability to somehow look so mundane and yet so strange and beautiful all at the same time. He watched as she laid down on her back in the grass, feet still kicking gently in the water, and looked back at him with her large brown eyes, crickled slightly at the corners from her bright, drunken grin.  _

_ “Whatcha lookin’ at me like that for?” Adam laughed.  _

_ “You were looking at me first,” Blue teased, rolling over onto her stomach to mimic Adam’s position, still smiling at him.  _

_ “I was looking at you ‘cause you look pretty,” Adam told her. He hadn’t really meant to say it out loud. The winemelon must have been getting to his head.  _

_ Blue got to her feet.  _

_ Adam watched her, nervous butterflies in his stomach, as she rather unsteadily made her way from the bank of the river back to the picnic blanket and sat down beside him again, closer than she had been before. He reached out to tuck a rogue strand of dark hair that had escaped her ponytail behind her ear.  _

_ “You ever kissed anybody?” Blue asked softly.  _

_ Adam shook his head.  _

_ “Me neither,” Blue admitted. “You… wanna change that?”  _

_ Adam nodded.  _

_ Blue smiled.  _

_ Adam sat up, moving so that Blue was positioned between his long outstretched legs, and placed his hands on her waist as she kissed him, hands cupping his cheeks, eyes closed, breath soft and warm. Her lips were sweet with winemelon juice.  _

_ She kissed him again. Harder this time, fingers pressed against his chest, smiling against his mouth as he made a soft, content sound.  _

_ He wound his arms around her and lifted her into his lap.  _

_ She grazed her teeth across his bottom lip as she pulled away. He took a deep, shaky breath, raising his hand to brush her cheek with the pad of his thumb.  _

_ “Can I… take this off?” She asked, gently pulling at the fabric of Adam’s worn shirt. “Would that be weird?”  _

_ “Wouldn’t be weird,” Adam assured her, leaning back a little to give her more room. “Go ahead.”  _

_ Blue took Adam’s shirt off, stopping to marvel at the tiny violet flowers that were starting to bud from his skin just above his collar bones. She had seen this before—flowers and leaves and vines sprouted all over him quite often—but winemelon sugar had a tendency to make the miraculous even more magical, and Adam had a feeling such a thing was pretty miraculous to her.  _

_ “Whoa,” she breathed, gingerly brushing her fingertips along the delicate petals of one of the flowers. “Pretty.”  _

_ She smiled as Adam pressed his lips to her jaw, and then gently pushed him away to strip off her multicolored top.  _

_ Adam reached up to gently trace a line along Blue’s soft skin, lingering on her emerald green bra strap.  _

_ “Pretty,” he echoed quietly.  _

_ The thing about winemelon sugar was that, while it was certainly possible to get intoxicated from it, it took a great deal of it to do so. The thing about Adam Parrish was that he always got the hiccups from too much winemelon sugar. He knew this about himself, and hadn’t been too concerned about it when he had agreed to get drunk with Blue, but he also had not been planning to make out with his best friend at the time of this agreement.  _

_ Blue’s mouth was already pressed against his again by the time he noticed the pressure on his chest. He didn’t have time to do anything before a loud, painful hiccup jerked him away from her. He groaned and pressed a hand to his sternum as Blue raised her eyebrows in surprise.  _

_ They stayed like that for a moment, just staring at each other, Adam completely mortified and Blue looking shocked, and then burst into a fit of laughter so sudden and raw that it startled the birds from their nests in the trees. They collapsed on their backs, sprawled out across the blanket, knocking pastries off their plates and melon rinds into the grass. Adam hiccuped again, which caused Blue to laugh even harder and Adam to keep laughing even though it hurt his ribs. They laughed until tears streamed down their cheeks and their lungs begged for air.  _

_ “What were we thinking?” Blue asked once they’d calmed down enough to speak again.  _

_ “I don’t know.” Adam shook his head. “The cinnamon must have gone to our heads.”  _

_ “Right, right. Definitely the cinnamon.” Blue smiled and let her eyes fall closed. “Speaking of, I think I’m gonna call the bakery Psychic Confections.”  _

_ “Oh good, that one was my favorite,” Adam teased.  _

_ Blue sat up, mouth agape, eyes ablaze. “You bastard!”  _

_ Adam shrugged and they laughed again until they were sure they would die if they laughed anymore.  _

_ They didn’t bother getting dressed. The warmth of the sun felt nice on their skin anyway. Blue lay back down next to Adam on the blanket and the two of them spent the rest of the day sleeping off the drunken haze. _

_ _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ _

_ Twenty-year-old Adam Parrish could not stop staring at Persephone Poldma.  _

_ She was not what he’d expected. _

_ She was precisely what he’d expected. _

_ Most days in the Wildwood were something to behold, and this day was no different. It was drizzling, a fine, misting rain coating everything in its wake, casting rainbows full across the cloudless sky and pooling in the petals of the daylilies bounding about the forest’s edge. Adam was tempted to coax one from its proud stem and tip the water to his mouth, but Blue was one step ahead of him, already wiping the moisture from her lips with the back of her hand, and it was impolite to pick in pairs.  _

_ “Go on, child,” Persephone told him, and Adam started. Before he could inquire as to what he should  _ go on  _ with, Persephone plucked a lily and drank, nodding for Adam to do the same. “Three is the best number for magic, you know. Powerful.” _

_ Adam wasn’t sure which question to ask first, so he settled on none, gently twisting a flower from its stalk and draining the water from its center.  _

_ “Ugh. Isn’t there anywhere... _ drier? _ ” Blue complained, shaking her fingers through her damp, dark hair. It was loose and wild today, free from its usual barrage of multicolored fasteners and barrettes, and when she let it go it remained in a relatively pushed-back state, revealing the ever-so-slightly peaked tips of her ears. _

_ “Of course,” Persephone confirmed, but made no move to flee. Then, gently, to Adam, “Spit it out.” _

_ “I’ve seen you before.” It was what Adam had been thinking, so, employing a little educated guesswork based on the ordeal with the lilies, he surmised that it was what she wanted to hear. “I’ve had dreams about you. Tons of them. Since I was young. I know how this sounds, but I’m telling you, I’m—” _

_ “Sure.” Persephone was either completing Adam’s sentence for him or agreeing amiably with his claim; he wasn’t quite clear which.  _

_ “Wait. What?” _

_ Adam turned his attention to Blue. “The white haired woman. It’s her.” _

_ Blue turned her attention to Persephone. “You  _ knew.  _ Didn’t you? Why didn’t you say something? Why’d you wait so long to tell me you wanted to come meet him?” _

_ “Everything in its own time,” Persephone said. She was too busy twisting her long, wet hair into a braid to meet either of their eyes. “Come. Walk with me.” _

_ Adam and Blue followed dutifully behind Persephone as she led them along the outskirts of the woods and then, finally, inside. They wove between bushes and trees, deepening their trek until they’d receded so far from the river that Adam could no longer hear it rushing and rolling; so far that the light was growing foggy and dim. The wet  _ crunch  _ of leaves beneath their feet had begun to mimic whispers seconds or minutes or years ago, and Adam had to shake his head to keep from attempting to decipher their nonexistent messages. _

_ When the canopy above them began to thin once again, Persephone slowed, turning to face Adam, and asked, “Have you ever seen someone die?” _

_ Adam wasn’t sure when Blue had taken his hand, but she squeezed it now, thumb stroking his own. “Adam, no, you—you don’t have to talk about this.” _

_ “It’s alright,” he assured her, squeezing back. They’d come to a halt, but Adam knew where they were. The Death Path loomed directly beyond the treeline, and past it was the ocean of the kingdom Caeruleum. He wasn’t sure why Persephone had brought them here, but her black eyes glimmered, and he didn’t have to guess that it related to her query in some way. “Yeah, I’ve, uh. My mom. I watched my mom die.” _

_ Persephone nodded, thoughtful. Adam suspected she’d already been aware of this. “And you had no part in her death?” _

_ “Persephone!” _

_ “It’s  _ alright,  _ Blue. No. No, I didn’t. Not even by omission, if that’s what you mean. I couldn’t have saved her if I’d tried.” _

_ Persephone nodded again. “Would you have? If you’d had the chance, given the state she was in, would you have kept her alive?” _

_ Adam’s feet were beginning to feel the chill of the rain. He shifted his weight from his left to his right. He didn’t ask how Persephone knew what state she’d been in. “You mean if I hadn’t been able to...to make her better? No. It would’ve been a miserable existence, living like that.” _

_ A third time, Persephone nodded, turning her back to Adam and Blue again and heading their party out of the woods.  _

_ Adam had been on the Death Path before, but not often. _

_ And not when it wasn’t vacant. _

_ Before them lay a young, thin girl, hardly breathing, arms outstretched toward the treeline as though she’d been crawling forward when she collapsed. _

_ “Oh,  _ god,”  _ Blue breathed, hand covering her mouth. “Is she…?” _

_ “No,” Adam answered, shaking his head. He hadn’t meant to approach the girl, but before he knew it, his knees were sinking into the ground next to her hip, his middle and forefingers searching deftly for her pulse. “She’s alive. Just barely.” _

_ “She could lie here for hours. Maybe a couple of days.” Persephone spoke solidly and with no hint of nerves, long skirts swishing around her ankles and collecting debris as she came to stand on the girl’s other side. “She’s still on the Path, meaning she has no founder unless you remove her. Which is, of course, an option.” _

_ Too quickly, Adam understood. “But it wouldn’t do her any good. She’s beyond saving. I’m not going to dose her up on faerie fruit and enslave her until she dies.” _

_ “No,” Persephone agreed. _

_ Blue’s eyes were wide as she lowered her hand from her mouth. “Persephone, what are you doing? What are  _ we  _ doing here?” _

_ “I know,” Adam said, brushing a tight, black curl back from the girl’s face. “I have to kill her.” _

_ Blue gasped.  _

_ Persephone hummed. “Brave, noble boy. You wouldn’t leave her to suffer.” _

_ The rain still hadn’t let up, but it hadn’t grown any heavier, either. Adam blinked the mist out of his eyes and sat down fully, legs crossed, gingerly guiding the girl’s upper torso into his lap. She was beautiful and rich with melanin, a stark contrast to even his farm-tanned skin. He couldn’t guess her age for certain, but if he’d had to, he would’ve assumed her only a couple of years younger than himself. Turned on her back, her shallow breathing had become more audible; a wet, staggered sound. _

_ Adam brought the backs of his fingers to her high, sharp cheekbone, stroking gently over the plane of skin leading to her jaw, and then down to her throat. He cradled her head in his left hand, stilling the fluttering of her eyelids with his right thumb. The heel of his palm fit snugly against the bridge of her nose. He wasn’t sure what he was doing—only that he felt it was his duty to know her before he took her life. _

_ “Adam,” Persephone prompted, a whisper. _

_ Adam closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and snapped the girl’s neck. _

_ Everything was still.  _

_ When it wasn’t again, the cacophony of sound was nearly enough to overwhelm Adam’s senses.  _

_ Blue sobbed. Ravens screamed in the distance. The tides were audible from across the Path and the Skirt, crashing and lapping hungrily against the shoreline. _

_ “Give her to the sea,” Persephone instructed. “It’s calling her home.” _

_ When Adam opened his eyes, he didn’t dare set them on the girl before them. He simply pushed himself back to his knees, lifted her into his arms, and climbed to his feet, carrying her swiftly and easily to the water’s edge.  _

_ “Be well,” he told her, and set her off. _

_ He hadn’t heard Persephone following him, but she apparently had been, as now she stood merely a foot behind him, observing him with an entirely neutral expression. _

_ Blue was still near the edge of the woods, tears intermingling with the rain on her cheeks.  _

_ The journey back to the farm was silent. _

_ “I am honored to have finally made your acquaintance, Adam,” Persephone told him, back in his grove. They’d sheltered in a tool shed and dried off as best they could, allowing the rain time to pass before venturing back out to land at Adam’s tree. “I won’t forget the choice you made today. I would advise that you don’t forget it, either.” _

_ Adam was unsure how to respond.  _ Thank you  _ didn’t feel appropriate, and assuring her that he wouldn’t forget didn’t feel large enough. He couldn’t stop feeling the  _ snap  _ of the girl’s brittle bones beneath his hands. He couldn’t stop wondering why he hadn’t felt a hint of remorse. Why he still didn’t. _

_ Before he could force a response, Persephone’s hand came to rest against his forehead. _

_ Everywhere he looked, there were flames. _

_ He was gasping against the smoke instantly, choking and coughing as though he’d already breathed in an impossible amount of it. He couldn’t see past the wall of fire in any direction, no matter where he turned or how hard he struggled. _

_ He heard the unmistakable sound of a tree trunk splitting, and then felt the unmistakable quaking of the ground that meant it had fallen. _

_ And then Persephone removed her hand from his head, and everything returned to the way it had been only a beat ago, the warmth of the sun over the grove soothing the chills running up Adam’s bare back as he struggled to breathe. _

_ “What the hell was that?” Blue asked, rushing to his side to steady him as he trembled. “What did you do to him?” _

_ “Brave, noble boy,” Persephone repeated. And then she took her leave. _

_ ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ _

Twenty-three-year-old Adam Parrish was tending to the royal plum trees on the outskirts of the farm. Artemus was right, they were looking a bit like no one had paid any attention to them in far too long, despite the fact that Adam had spent an entire afternoon plucking ripe fruit and trimming branches not even two weeks ago. Adam might have been annoyed by this were it not for the fact that these trees were his. They were the first seeds Artemus had entrusted to him to plant on his own, the first saplings he had nursed back to health when drought took the farm, the first fruit he had bitten into and been proud to say he grew all on his own. He loved them the way he imagined a father should love his child—gently and unconditionally—and so he didn’t mind spending the more reasonable hours of the morning resetting stakes and picking off dead leaves and branches to make room for new growth. In fact, he took pride in it, and savored the serene peacefulness of the moment. 

In return for his love and care, the royal plum trees offered Adam their own in the form of shade. It was hot, and the rays of the early summer sun were not always kind, and so the branches, thick with deep purple leaves, served as a sort of shield. They seemed to follow Adam as he made his way around the rather thin trucks, reaching to cast their cool shadow onto him. 

A few hours later the trees were looking almost regal and Adam was soaked with sweat and rubbing sore hands. 

“Feel better?” he asked, smiling in spite of himself as he admired his work. The trees did not answer him (he had not expected them to) but he felt a swell of his love for them in his chest that he was sure echoed their love for him. He patted one of the trunks and turned to head back toward the barn. 

Artemus was, just as he’d said he would be, engrossed in sowing seeds in his patch of fresh soil. He was kneeling on the ground, spreading dirt over a small hole in front of him, gently patting it down before brushing the excess from his hands and digging into the burlap pouch on his belt for another seed. 

“Ah, there you are,” he greeted Adam pleasantly. “Do me a favor, would you?” 

“Sure,” Adam said with a nod, watching as Artemus made another hole a foot or two from the last with his fingers and placed a perfectly round, nearly translucent, blueish seed inside. 

“I forgot my watering can in the barn, would you grab it for me? It should be full already, but if it’s not would you fill it up, too?” 

“I think I can handle that,” Adam agreed. “I’ll be right back.” 

It took Adam a while to find the watering can. Artemus had always been good at hiding things, especially from himself, and had left it behind a stack of barrels in the corner of the room, which led Adam to wonder why in the world he’d had it there to begin with. It was, of course, empty. He shook his head fondly and made his way down to the river to fill it. 

The water was crystal clear as it always was, and Adam could see clusters of silver and red fish chasing each other between rocks and through soft patches of river moss. He crouched down on the bank and dipped his hands in the cool water to rub some of it over the back of his neck, dampening the collar of his shirt and letting his eyes fall closed for a moment. The gentle breeze picked up rather suddenly, causing the leaves around Adam to rustle and the slightest of chills to run down his spine. He opened his eyes again. 

He picked the silver-looking watering can that was most certainly not silver back up to submerge it, startling a few nearby fish, and held it until it was full. He poured some of the water out again so that he could carry it back without it spilling all over his legs and got back to his feet. 

The grass along his path back to the farm was long and dry and dotted with bright yellow dandelions and buttercups. The soft blades gently tickled his ankles as he walked, while the sharper ones left little scratches on his skin that he knew would itch like hell later. Bumblebees bumbled awkwardly between light purple clover flowers and the occasional butterfly landed gracefully on the leaves of a weed, wings fluttering and coming together to display their beautiful patterns and stained glass-like colors with pride. Adam always thought the butterflies were a little pretentious; he liked the way the bumblebees buzzed around, clumsily bumping into flowers and leaves, their tiny wings somehow carrying their fat little bodies around without a care in the world. He was very careful not to step on any of them. 

Just as Adam crossed the line where the thick, wild grass of the rest of the forest met the tan dirt of the farmland he stepped in something wet. This was unusual; it hadn’t rained in days, and left over rain puddles never took very long to dry up in this part of the Wildwood. He thought for a moment that maybe he had spilled some of the water from Artemus’s watering can, but when he looked down he realized that his boot was splashed with crimson. He was standing in blood. 

A million thoughts rushed through his head at once, most of them assuming something terrible had happened to Artemus, a few of them considering that he might be in danger, too, if that were indeed the case. He set the watering can down. 

From what he could see of the farm from where he was standing, there was no sign of distress. All the trees within his line of sight were still perfectly intact, the barn did not appear disturbed in the slightest, and there were no sounds or signs of movement. He looked back down to the puddle of blood at his feet and took a deep breath. 

The puddle broke off into a sort of trail, as if whoever—or whatever—was bleeding had stopped for a moment before continuing. Adam, against his better judgement, decided to follow it. 

He was as quiet as he could possibly be, staying low and placing each step with extra care. He considered that maybe it would have been a good idea to bring the watering can with him considering he had no weapons, or anything at all to defend himself with, for that matter, but it felt too late to go back, so he kept moving. 

The blood trail led Adam to a small, grassy clearing not far from the farm. Before him was a small framed, blond haired boy with delicate, glass-like wings. A sylph, no doubt. He had his back to Adam, and he appeared to be dragging something larger than himself, his wings fluttering frantically in an attempt to get him and the larger-than-him thing off the ground. He was breathing heavily and looked a little unsteady on his feet. Maybe he was the one bleeding. 

“C’mon,” the sylph boy said desperately. “ _ C’mon,  _ stupid wings. Not now.” 

His wings stopped fluttering for a moment, which gave Adam a chance to see them better. He quietly marveled at the beauty of them, the delicate membranes almost sparkling as they caught the sunlight, the deep violet veins mirroring a map of rivers and streams, stretching across their glassy canvas to reach an unseen shore. 

The boy fell to his knees and bowed his head over the larger-than-him thing, his shoulders shaking with what Adam could only assume were silent sobs. 

Against Adam’s better judgement, he straightened up and stepped into the light of the clearing with his hands up. 

“Hey,” he said, quietly, so as not to startle the boy. “You, uh…you okay?” 

The sylph leapt to his feet and whirled around to face Adam, violet eyes wild with fear and desperation, blood smeared across his fair, slightly pale face and through his white-blond hair. He swayed and stumbled toward Adam, who rushed forward to catch him. 

With the sylph boy in his arms, Adam was finally close enough to see what he had been trying to carry. A body, ruined and bloody, and somehow still breathing. Adam’s eyes widened. 

“Please,” the sylph breathed, looking pleadingly up at Adam and clinging to his arms. “Please help us.” 

  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well would you look at that, we're on time again!  
> Thanks for reading!   
> -Em & Jess


	5. Six of Cups

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Being a dreamer was a wondrous and terrible thing."

Richard Campbell Gansey III paced.

He halted at the lattice-covered window furthest from his bed, fingers drumming on the sill, and peered out onto the treetops and rivers below him, forcing an uneven breath into his lungs and back out again. He entertained the notion, briefly, of breaking through the glass and scaling the side of the tower; his mother would never let him out if he attempted an escape through a traditional exit. But, realistically, he wouldn’t know where to go. So he pushed off the wall and began pacing back in the other direction.

“Dick,” his sister chastised from the day bed near the closets, holding her hand out to catch his when he reached her. “You’re making me nervous. Sit down.  _ Please _ .”

“I  _ can’t  _ sit down, Helen,” Gansey sighed, attempting to squash the irritation from his tone. This wasn’t her fault. “I can’t sit down when I shouldn’t even be in this room. I should have followed him or—or done  _ something _ .”

Helen swept her silky hair behind her shoulders and sat up, patting the cushion next to her. “Please,” she repeated.

Gansey sat.

Helen’s arm around him was infinitely comforting and he leaned into her as he’d been doing since they were children, allowing his eyes to fall closed. There wasn’t a sound in the palace today—not one that could be heard from Gansey’s sleeping quarters, at least. No whirring of the spinning wheel in the seamstress’s room, no tuning of the harp that meant preparation for a lavish event, not even a scullery maid rummaging about in a broom closet. Just Gansey and his sister and their breathing. 

“You should eat something,” Helen said, either to break the silence or because it was true. Possibly both.

Gansey shook his head against Helen’s shoulder, opening his eyes again and training them on a small blemish in the mortar between two of the bricks lining the door. “I couldn’t. I’m a wreck.”

“And you’re no good to anyone without your strength.” Helen straightened her back, pulling away from Gansey and cupping one of his cheeks in either of her hands. “You’ve eaten nothing but bread for three days. If you’re going to help Ronan, you’re going to have to be functional.”

Gansey shook his head gently, prompting Helen to relinquish her grasp. She wasn’t wrong, and he knew as much. But the thought of eating a meal prepared in their grand kitchens—by staff or otherwise—felt repulsive in conjunction with the probability of Ronan, miles from home, likely being starved. 

“Is this what he would want for you?”

Gansey pinched the bridge of his nose for a long, long moment. “Send for a charcuterie board. I’m going to wash up.”

Before Helen could respond, he stood and made his way out of the room and down the corridor to the lavatory. There was a basin of water next to the sink, and when he skimmed the surface with his fingertips he found that it was still lukewarm. He didn’t have a the energy to properly bathe, but his silver hand mirror informed him that he was looking a little worse for wear, so he picked up the cloth that had been left hanging on the edge of the basin and dipped it into the water, wringing it out before raising it to drag it across his face. It was refreshing, cooling as it dried, and he felt a little more alert by the time he was done; less like he was drifting through a haze, if only slightly. 

Because he had nothing better to do, he stripped off his tunic and wet the cloth again, squeezing out water over his neck and chest and shoulders. It was hot inside the palace, because it was summer and because the palace was filled with djinn, and while the rest of his family never seemed to mind, Gansey was always looking for ways to cool down. Probably, he surmised, it was due to the frequency of his outings with Ronan; of their tendency to spend hours upon hours lazing in the river when the sun was high. 

Gods, Gansey missed him. 

It had only been a handful of days since he’d seen him, but the finality was the heaviest burden he’d ever carried. The minutes stretched into hours, hours into infinity. The probability of a lifetime without Ronan made the miniscule amount of time they’d already spent apart feel like all the years Gansey had ever lived threefold. 

“Dick?”

Helen’s voice snapped him out of his thoughts and he tugged his shirt back over his head, running his hand through the damp front of his hair as he pulled open the door.

“Food’s here.”

Gansey hadn’t realized how ravenous he’d been. 

Half a charcuterie board (Helen had eaten the other half), an apple, a banana, and a pumpkin muffin later, he was finally satiated, lying back across his down mattress, hands crossed over his stomach.

His sister lay next to him, arms beneath her head, staring up at the tiny, twinkling stars dancing over the ceiling. They were more difficult to see during the day, but still very clearly present, and Gansey followed her gaze, allowing them to calm his nerves the best they could.

Helen laughed, a soft huff of a breath out her nose. “Can you imagine the fortune our parents must have paid for this kind of magic?”

“Oh, your room was undoubtedly more expensive,” Gansey teased, the corner of his lips lifting in something akin to a smile. “My stars are always there. Your music doesn’t play until you’re lying down. It knows you.”

“Hm.” Helen smiled, too, softer and warmer than the smile she wore around their mother and father and their affiliates. It was a smile Gansey saw often; one reserved specifically for times such as these, when they’d shared a flute of wine and could dwell on nothing but how preposterously idyllic their life was. “What do you suppose they’ve given the most for in the entire palace? Palace itself not included, of course.”

Gansey considered for a moment. Then, quietly, “Me.”

Helen stilled beside him. “Oh, little brother. You were worth it all. Every coin.”

“It isn’t even what saved me.”

“It isn’t,” Helen agreed, propping herself up on her elbow to stroke his temple. “But it was worth it just to try.”

Gansey opened his mouth, but his breath caught in his throat when there was a rap on the door and then descended back to his lungs when his father appeared on the other side. “Son,” he said. Not  _ Dick _ . Not regal. Whatever news he was preparing to deliver, it wasn’t as the king. 

Gansey was on his feet before his brain had commanded his body to rise, crossing the floor and steadying himself on the doorframe next to his father’s arm. “Tell me,” he demanded. “Tell me where he is. Tell me what they’re doing to him.”

Richard Gansey II swept his gaze over the room, allowing himself a brief moment of solace before tackling the task of meeting his son’s eyes. “I expected to find a messenger, but I spoke with the king himself. He was…” He stopped, clearly anxious, though no one but another Gansey would’ve known it, and cleared his throat. “He was delivering Ronan to the Gardens.”

Time stopped. As did Gansey’s heart. For the first time since Ronan had jumped into the river after Kavinsky, he couldn’t think. His mind wasn’t running a million miles a minute—rather, it wasn’t running at all. There was a blank slate inside his head, devoid of the ability to form a coherent construct. “What?” he asked, and shook his head, because no.  _ No _ . Of course not. His father was mistaken. Or perhaps  _ he _ was—perhaps he’d simply misunderstood. He’d known from the beginning what this could mean—what it very likely  _ would _ mean, but having it presented to him in reality, in words… It was impossible. 

“The Gardens,” his father repeated, and then, more firmly, “The Hanging Gardens. Ronan’s been sentenced to death.”

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Declan Lynch was sitting in his coral throne with a crown of flawless seashells on his head and the bridge of his nose pinched between his thumb and his forefinger. His eyes were closed and his dark, shiny tails were winding anxiously around the legs of the regal, painstakingly crafted chair. 

Declan looked like a king. 

Ronan, however, looked like the hollow shell of what was once a prince. He stood before his brother with shaking hands, unable to look him in the eye. 

Joseph Kavinsky was standing beside Declan with his arms crossed over his bare chest and a wicked-as-always grin spread across his thin lips. He hovered above the sandy floor of the throne room, his sickly green tails kicking at the water around him to keep him afloat.

“Joseph,” Declan sighed, lifting his head to cast an irritated glance in Kavinsky’s direction. “You’re dismissed.” 

“Awh,” Kavinsky pouted. “But all the royal fun’s just getting started.” 

“You’re  _ dismissed,”  _ Declan hissed. “Get out before I run out of patience.” 

Kavinsky, true to character, made a show of his exit, kicking his tails so close to Ronan’s face that Ronan could feel the water rippling around him, and patting one of the royal guards on the cheek as he threw the double doors of the throne room open and slammed them behind him. 

“Ronan.” Declan lowered his head back to its original position. He looked like a marble statue, as if someone had carved out the image of what Declan Lynch, King of Caeruleum was supposed to look like, and placed it in the seat where Declan Lynch, Ronan’s brother should have been. Ronan wished he could still find a shred of the latter behind the stillness of the stone. 

“I know,” Ronan said. 

“No.” Declan raised the hand that wasn’t pinching his nose to stop Ronan. “You don’t. You don’t know. You can’t possibly know or you wouldn’t have—” He stopped and squeezed his eyes closed impossibly tighter. 

Ronan ran the palm of his hand over the back of his neck. 

“Can I—can I see Matthew?” 

Declan scoffed. 

“Please?” 

“Why would I let you see Matthew?” Declan practically demanded. He opened his eyes and lifted his gaze to meet Ronan’s for the first time since he and Kavinsky had burst into the throne room. “Why would I do that to him, Ronan?” 

“I just want to say goodbye.” Ronan’s voice was broken and small. 

Declan sighed heavily and waved a hand toward the guards at the door. 

“Send for my brother,” he commanded, then turned back to Ronan. “You know I can’t let you live, right?” 

“I know,” Ronan replied flatly. “I already told you, I know.” 

“Good.” Declan’s eyes were wild, either with rage or terror. Ronan wasn’t sure which. “Then I need you to do something for me.” 

“Okay,” Ronan agreed softly. 

“I need you to dream...yourself. It doesn’t have to be perfect, just good enough to be convincing. So I can just watch my little brother leave instead of watching him die.” 

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Being a dreamer was a wondrous and terrible thing. 

In Ronan Lynch’s current case, the wonder came from his uncanny ability to dream a near-exact replica of himself. The terror, however, came from the knowledge that he was dreaming it for slaughter. 

He’d locked himself in his sleeping chambers, as he always did when he was dreaming and particularly when he was dreaming something so substantial, in fear that he would bring out something with long enough claws and sharp enough teeth to wreak havoc on the palace and the entirety of its occupants. The walls of the room were reinforced with steel and protective sigils, and Ronan said a quick prayer that this wouldn’t be the day he finally dreamed something vicious enough to break through them. 

Eyes closed, breathing evened, Ronan began to count backward from one thousand in his head, his brain automatically playing the memory of his mother’s humming over and over again on a loop. Before he’d made it to nine-hundred, he was asleep. 

Inside the dream, Ronan found himself surrounded by the trees of the Glen. 

This had been the case since the first day Gansey had shown it to him; he’d come to the Glen to ask for whatever it was he needed most, and the Glen had provided. 

Today, he closed his eyes, attempted to attune himself to the Glen’s uncanny, wild magic, and began to draw forth all the energy he could muster.

He didn’t see himself often, so this was easily one of the more difficult tasks he’d set out on, and he couldn’t force his mind to stray from the visual of his double being incinerated or possibly ripped apart alive in the Hanging Gardens long enough for any real clarity, but he grasped at every straw he could until something solid stuck.

The something solid, it turned out, was Gansey. Ronan shouldn’t have been surprised. Gansey had been the most solid thing in his life for years now. This was just proof that his subconscious agreed.

He couldn’t properly imagine himself without Gansey, so he imagined himself  _ with  _ Gansey instead, and the likeness of the djinn who materialized across the field was breathtaking. Ronan’s own double was there, too, though Ronan didn’t think he looked  _ quite  _ right; however, that could have simply been due to the fact that he’d never seen himself from an outside perspective. 

Dream-Gansey turned to him and smiled, soft and warm, and Ronan felt his heart breaking in his chest. “Hello, love. Join us?”

Ronan’s feet were carrying him over the grass before he’d offered them his consent, only halting once he’d reached Gansey’s side. His doppleganger gazed up at him, even and somewhat disinterested. 

“You aren’t real,” Ronan told them both.

“Real is relative,” dream-Gansey responded, reaching out to brush the tips of his fingers against the tips of Ronan’s. Ronan thought the longing might bring him to his knees. “Sit. You look tired.”

“I don’t have time,” Ronan forced himself to say. He wondered if he sounded as strained to dream-Gansey as he did to himself. Then, turning to his double, “I need you to come with me.”

Because Ronan had attempted to dream himself with as close a likeness to his  _ actual  _ self as he possibly could, dream-Ronan’s eyes narrowed. “Why?”

Ronan sighed, running a hand over his head. “You know why.” Ronan wasn’t sure that he had before, but now Ronan was insistent that he did, and so he did. Dream logic.

“Piss up a rope,” dream-Ronan told him. “I’m not going anywhere with you.”

Ronan took a breath. Apparently it was beyond him to make anything easy on himself. “Yes,” he told his dream-self. “You are.”

Dream-Ronan spat on the ground—a gesture so reminiscent of Kavinsky that Ronan had to look away. “Who’s gonna make me? You?”

Because dream-Gansey was  _ dream _ and not  _ real _ , Ronan should’ve guessed which one of them he would side with. That wasn’t to say he explicitly or verbally sided with  _ either _ of them; he just remained silent and still, which was as well as siding with dream-Ronan.

“Yeah, if I have to,” Ronan told him. He was getting a little irritated with his dream-self, and he definitely  _ didn’t _ wonder what that said about him. “Or you could just cooperate.”

“Oh, yeah,” dream-Ronan scoffed, plucking at the leather bands on his wrist. “Just cooperate and  _ die _ .”

“You’re not  _ real _ ,” Ronan reminded him. “You can’t die if you’ve never been alive. You can’t even be  _ afraid _ to die. If I didn’t take you with me you’d just stop existing when I woke up.”

Dream-Ronan stood, and Ronan realized maybe he’d dreamt him with the confrontational nature of his teenage self rather than his current one. “Who the hell are you to tell me what I can and can’t be afraid of? And clearly I damn well  _ can  _ die or you wouldn’t need me at all!”

Ronan felt his hands curling into fists at his sides. He took another breath. “You’re not  _ real _ , and you’re not  _ dying _ . You’re just—I don’t know, like a fucking stuffed animal or something. You probably don’t have nerve endings or internal organs or any of that shit.”

Dream-Ronan pinched himself, hard and pointed, on the forearm. “Sure as shit  _ feels _ like I have nerve endings. Want me to punch myself in the stomach and see if I can puke all over you?”

Ronan was beginning to think dream-Gansey wasn’t intervening because Ronan couldn’t bear to see Gansey distressed—this was  _ his  _ dream, after all. He sat, still and silent as a statue, a serene expression written over his beautiful face.

Ronan tore his eyes away. “You’re coming with me,” he said, with an air of finality that, he thought, left no room for argument. 

Apparently he’d thought wrong.

A dark, smug grin painted itself on his double’s lips, and he crossed his arms over his chest. “I already told you,  _ asshole. I’m not going anywhere with you. _ ”

Before Ronan could consider how strongly he disliked that grin, there was a rustling in the treetops behind them.

When Ronan looked up, he wished he hadn’t. 

The creature above him was unfathomably large and unfathomably black. Its wings spanned an entire quarter of the Glen, and it blocked out enough of the sun that a shadow was cast over at least half. When it landed, something sharp and unfamiliar twisted in Ronan’s stomach. He’d dreamt his fair share of night horrors, but this was not his typical brand. It felt wholly new to him, like something the recesses of his mind would never have dredged up. 

“What the fuck is  _ that _ ?” he managed, taking an instinctive step back.

“A nightmare,” dream-Ronan responded, clearly unbothered. “She’ll do what I tell her to. And if you don’t accept that you’re leaving here without me, what I’ll tell her to do is get rid of you. By whatever means necessary.”

“Like hell you will,” Ronan scoffed, incredulous, still cautiously eyeing the beast. “You’re  _ my  _ dream and you’re coming with me.”

Dream-Ronan sighed. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

The beast was quick, but Ronan was quicker. 

He took one last look at dream-Gansey, still unfazed and unmoving, and darted forward, wrapping his fingers securely around his dream double’s wrist as he ripped himself into consciousness.

When he awoke, as always, he was paralyzed. 

Next to him, wrist still held in his vice-grip, was his dream-self, in the flesh. He seemed to be paralyzed as well, though Ronan couldn’t turn his head to get a good enough look to be sure. 

Surrounding them was a monstrous set of black wings.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

“It’s done.” 

Declan Lynch was startled awake, before the sunrise judging by how dark it was in the room, by two sirens floating in the doorway of his sleeping chambers. One of them was his brother Ronan, and the other was… also his brother Ronan. 

Declan blinked. 

One Ronan was leaning against the doorframe with his arms crossed over his bare chest looking a bit like he’d gotten in a fight with a sawfish and it hadn’t done much more than piss him off. The other Ronan looked equally as angry, but much less cut up, and his hands were tied behind his back, his dark tails twisting strangely beneath him.

“Have fun with  _ this _ ,” the unbound Ronan said, voice laced with venom as he shoved his doppleganger toward the giant green coral Declan slept on. The shoved shot a dark glare in the direction of the shover before turning back to Declan with a sick, twisted grin. This Ronan Lynch before him was not the real Ronan Lynch. This Ronan Lynch was not  _ real  _ at all _.  _ This Ronan Lynch was a dream. 

“Well done,” Declan praised, pushing himself up onto his elbows and scrubbing a hand through his charcoal hair. “I almost couldn’t tell the difference.” 

“Thanks, I guess,” the real Ronan sighed. 

There was a moment of silence between the two brothers and the dream. The Lynches that shared blood avoided each other’s eyes at all costs. The Lynch that shared nothing with Declan and everything with Ronan looked pleased by the amount of tension in the room. Declan didn’t like this dream Ronan very much. 

“Where will you go?” Declan finally asked.

“Does it matter?” Ronan’s voice was small and might have been shaking if Declan didn’t know better. 

The dream Ronan shrieked a loud, hideous laugh, resulting in a tail smack across the back of the head from the real Ronan. 

“Fuck are you laughing about?” Ronan demanded. 

The dream was grinning wickedly as he teased, “I know where you’re going.” 

Ronan smacked him again.

“No,” Declan interjected before dream-Ronan could say anything else. He was starting to make Declan very uneasy. “I suppose it doesn’t really matter.” 

“Then don’t worry about it,” Ronan said, shaking his head. “Let’s just get this over with.” 

The dream stayed locked in Declan’s chambers while the Lynch brothers made their way through the castle. 

There was something about this moment that tasted bittersweet to Declan. This moment of sneaking through the quiet, castle corridors in the dim light of the moon, around guards who were dozing off at their posts, their heads bowed, their webbed fingers slipping lazily down the brilliant gold shafts of their tridents. It felt like a game they would have played when they were both no more than young princes hiding from the ever watchful and wise, yet playful and somewhat childlike eye of their father. They made their way down from the royal wing at the top of the stairs at the north end of the castle to the ballroom that, when standing dark and empty as it always did before the sun rose and Matthew awoke to watch schools of fish dance through the glittering sunlight from behind the glass wall, reminded Declan of what he imagined a vast cavern would look like.

“Race you to the other side,” Ronan said. His voice was quiet, so as not to alert any of the guard, but his eyes were ablaze with a mercurial flame Declan hadn’t seen in a long time. 

“It won’t be much of a contest,” Declan accepted with a mischievous grin. 

The brothers raced across the ballroom, their shimmering tails tearing through the water, leaving trails of ripples behind them. 

They were neck and neck, switching between first and second place by mere inches. 

As Declan took the lead for the third or fourth time, Ronan swatted at him with one of his tails and shot forward, laughing triumphantly. 

“Hey, quit playing dirty, Lynch,” Declan exclaimed, although he was laughing too. 

“Maybe you should quit playin’ clean,  _ Lynch.”  _ Ronan teased, turning back to stick his tongue out at Declan and simultaneously crashing into the wall. 

The brothers froze, eyes wide, holding their breath. Surely the sound of Ronan colliding with stone would have alerted the guard to their presence. They’d be caught. The king in the ballroom playing games with his treasonous brother. 

A moment passed. 

Nothing. 

They both breathed a sigh of relief. 

Ronan rubbed the back of his head, wincing as his fingers brushed across tender skin. 

“I win,” he mouthed. 

Declan rolled his eyes. 

Their last stop was the kitchens. 

Declan stuck his head in first to make sure none of the cooks had risen early to start preparing breakfast. He waved Ronan in as soon as he knew the coast was clear. 

The kitchens were lit by enchanted brick ovens that kept flames alive even deep beneath the sea. Matthew must have asked Declan how they worked a thousand times. Everytime he asked, Declan said he didn’t know, because he didn’t, and he secretly found them just as miraculous as his blond headed little brother. 

The red stone counters were covered in all sorts of treats. Bright purple sea urchins cracked open and sprinkled with delicate pink salt, shimmering golden kelp rolled up into the shape of tiny dragons, beautiful enough to decorate the walls of the palace if they didn’t taste so sweet, faerie fruits of all shapes and sizes and colors, and of course, bottles and bottles of faerie wine. 

Ronan swiped two of the royal plums from a basket, bit into one, and tossed the other to Declan. 

Declan caught the fruit and raised an eyebrow at his brother. 

“Oh don’t,” Ronan sighed. “No one will miss it. Live a little.” 

Declan couldn’t argue with this, or maybe he didn’t want to, so he took a bite. 

At the entrance of the escape tunnel Ronan was to exit through, the brothers stopped. The sweetness of this bittersweet morning had dissipated and been overtaken by the bitterness. 

“Be safe, yes?” Declan said quietly.

“Yeah,” Ronan replied, eyes cast to the floor. “You too. You and Matthew.” 

“We will,” Declan said with a nod. 

“Oh, hey.” Ronan ran a hand over the back of his head. “Do me a favor and don’t open my bedroom door. Like, ever.” 

“Can I ask why?” 

“I’d rather you didn’t.” 

“Alright,” Declan agreed. “I won’t.” 

Ronan didn’t say anything. He just nodded. 

“Well then,” Declan sighed. “I guess this is goodbye.” 

Ronan didn’t say anything to this either. Instead he balled his hands into fists and rested his forehead against Declan’s shoulder. Declan, a little taken aback by this, placed his hand on the back of Ronan’s shaved head and closed his eyes. 

They stood like this for a moment before Ronan turned, slipped through the tunnel, and disappeared. 

A young, innocent, playful prince waved goodbye to his brother. A king turned to head back into the castle to face reality again. 

On his way back up to the royal wing to get the dream-Ronan, Declan was thrown against the wall by… something. 

Maybe it had very large fins, or maybe they were wings. Maybe it had claws or teeth or a beak or some strange combination of the three. Maybe it had scales, or maybe they were feathers. Either way, it was large, and very fast, and it was gone before Declan could blink. Maybe it hadn’t been there at all. 

Except it must have been. Because the door to Ronan’s sleeping chambers was open. Or more like shredded. 

“Damn it, Ronan,” he hissed. “What have you done now?” 

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The black-tailed boy was an avid and violent swimmer. 

Luckily for the night horror, so was it.

It remained far enough away from the boy to ensure that he never caught on to its following him, only keeping him in its line of sight by the merest margin. 

When he ducked between two walls of rock so close together he was forced to turn onto his side, the night horror became an eel and trailed him through. 

When he tucked himself against the ocean floor, the night horror camouflaged itself into the sand and took care not to disturb its surroundings. 

When he brushed over an unsuspecting group of sea anemones, the night horror clustered among them, disguising itself as one of their own. 

They swam low and high and low again, never breaching the surface of the water until the rays of light penetrating it had shifted from the silvery, shimmering light of the moon to the warm, golden hue of the sun. 

The night horror couldn’t be sure where they were or where they were going, but it didn’t matter. Its motive was simple: kill the boy.

In the night horror’s defense, it wasn’t at fault. It wasn’t responsible for its own programming. It hadn’t dreamt itself. In fact, technically, the  _ boy _ had dreamt it. Or, at least, his double had. The night horror supposed those things were not one and the same, but the boy wouldn’t know that and the night horror had no way to convey any such information. 

They trekked on.

Once they reached the water’s edge, the night horror stilled itself, waiting. It watched the boy pull himself gracelessly from the sea and onto the sand of the Skirt, eyes darting around to be sure he was alone before coughing up a great lungful of water and digging his fingers into the earth impatiently as he awaited the formation of his land legs. Once they’d shifted, he righted himself, unsteady as a newborn calf but quickly gaining his footing and his momentum as he disappeared into the woods.

The creature made its move. 

It dragged its form from the salty ocean, manifesting itself the same wings it had worn in the dream again. It did not need to breathe, either underwater or in the air, and so there was no need for it to fashion a set of lungs. When it took flight, it was silent. 

It peered down on the boy from far, far above, careening this way and that so as not to lose sight of him when the trees became less crown shy and melted into one another. He was headed toward the middle of the forest now, but the night horror was sure his final destination was meant to be the clearing from the dream. 

He wasn’t going to make it there.

On the far side of a small river, it swooped down hard and fast enough to fell him instantly, knocking him to the ground, all the breath leaving his chest in a harsh  _ whoosh. _ Had the night horror been designed to feel emotion, it would likely have experienced exhilaration at such a sound. As it stood, the creature felt nothing but drive to complete its task.

With the boy now struggling to pull himself up from the forest floor, the night horror’s job was nearly menial. The boy had become something of a plaything, and the night horror had no qualms with simply smacking him around, watching as he became dizzy and disoriented, tumbling through the trees. A handful of times, the creature allowed him to stabilize himself well enough to break into a run, only to morph itself into something easily hidden and tuck itself away in wait of springing out again before him.

The boy’s fear was delicious, but the night horror had to admit, it was slightly soured by the hint of defiance he somehow still managed to exude. He wasn’t going to go down easily; not even against something as deadly as an impossible, biological weapon. 

That was alright, though. The night horror enjoyed the challenge. 

When the boy began deftly scaling the side of a large pine, the creature allowed him to reach nearly the peak before knocking him down. There was a dull, pronounced  _ crunch  _ as he landed on his side, but to his credit, he only took around five seconds to mourn the condition of his ribs before forcing himself to his feet again and facing the night horror head-on.

He was bleeding all over—nose busted, hands shredded, right eyebrow split and swelling—but there was a look in his eye that said he wasn’t planning to surrender. He didn’t look afraid anymore. Just weary.

“What do you want?” he asked the creature, arms crossed tiredly over his abdomen. “Why are we playing games? If you’re going to kill me, just kill me.”

Well…

The night horror considered and found that there was really no way to fault such logic.

It extended its veiny, black wings, talons dripping a viscous, black poison, and ripped monstrous gashes down the boy’s back and front in tandem, each reaching from shoulder to hip.

The boy’s form thudded to the dirt so quickly the creature doubted he was alive long enough to feel it abrading his wounds. 

The forest was still and silent.

Blood seeped into the earth.

The night horror slithered back to the sea.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Ronan Lynch was asleep. 

At least, he thought he was asleep. 

He must have been dreaming the stranger with the soft looking hair and glass-like wings that had dragged him from where the nightmare left him alone to die. He must have been dreaming the pretty little barn in the distance when the freckle-faced farmer had found them. He must have been dreaming the freckle-faced farmer too. 

But this didn’t really  _ feel  _ like a dream. He couldn’t feel the fluidity of the world around him like he could when he was dreaming, the opportunity to manipulate his surroundings, to ask for what he needed, to take what he was interested in back to the stasis that was the waking world. He felt utterly still and solitary, which was not what it felt like to dream. Still, he wasn’t convinced. 

As his eyes fluttered open for the short moments he could keep them that way Ronan took note of the concern and urgency in the other boys’ voices, and the way their arms and hands felt on his skin as they carried him. One of them cold, the other rough and covered in calluses. 

Ronan decided his consciousness was questionable and to leave it at that. His physical state, however, was not questionable in the slightest.

He was bleeding. He was bleeding a lot. So much, in fact, that he was beginning to wonder if maybe his blood had somehow just forgotten how to clot, and also how he hadn’t died yet. He cursed the night horror and its strange, inexplicable dream venoms, but allowed himself to feel a little pride in having beaten it. So far, anyway. 

His eyes fell closed. 

When they opened again he found himself lying on a bed of moss and fallen leaves under tall trees with rich leaves and hearty trunks.

“I don’t know,” the smaller of the two strangers was saying as the farmer dropped his head into his hands and ran his fingers through his ashy hair. “If my wings would just  _ work  _ for once I could just fly him to my estate and call for a healer and be done with it. But it’s so far on foot. He’d never make it.” 

The light shimmering between the trunks of the trees paired with his blurry vision made it even easier for Ronan to believe he was dreaming. He was blinking through a sparkling, golden mist, listening to the soft and desperate voices of the strangers as they grew more and more muffled and distant and the rustling of the leaves above him grew louder, as if they were whispering but wanted to be overheard. Ronan was dizzy. He closed his eyes again. 

He thought of Gansey and the Glen in the soft morning sunlight. He thought about the sweet taste of the fruit they’d shared and the way the juice glistened on the soft skin of Gansey’s neck as his volcanic eyes blazed and a dimpled smile spread across his features. He thought of Gansey’s voice, rich in tone but gentle as a soft summer breeze, full of kindness and passion and mystery. He thought about what it was like to kiss him. To kiss a king. 

When he heard Gansey’s voice Ronan finally knew for sure that he was dreaming. 

“It can’t be,” Gansey breathed. His cadence was shaken with worry and fear and relief. “Tell me, where did you find this man?”

“I just stumbled across him on a run,” the winged boy answered. “He was out in the forest, just lying there.” 

“You know him?” the freckled farmer asked skeptically. 

“Yes,” Gansey almost laughed, breathy and filled with disbelief. “Yes, I know him.” 

Ronan opened his eyes. 

Standing before him, looking disheveled and like he hadn’t slept in days, was a king. A perfectly executed dream. 

“Hush, love,” the king said as Ronan stirred and he knelt beside him. “Don’t push yourself. It’s alright.” 

“This isn’t fair,” Ronan whispered, his voice hoarse and shaky. 

“What isn’t fair?” Gansey asked, soft and gentle as he reached out to stroke Ronan’s cheek. 

“That I can dream you like this.” Ronan closed his eyes against salty, stinging tears. “I just want you to be real.” 

“I am real,” Gansey breathed, lacing his soft, warm fingers between Ronan’s webbed ones, slick with cold sweat. “You’re awake. I’m right here.” 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're back! Ahh!


	6. Ace of Cups

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Blue wasn’t sure she believed in destiny or fate or the notion that everyone had someone (frankly, she was preferential to the idea of spending her life alone) but there was simply no denying the facts: her boys were soulmates.

Blue Sargent laughed, covering her mouth with her hand so as not to reveal her half-chewed snap pear to the rest of Ronan Lynch’s twenty-fifth birthday party attendees, and allowed herself to be twirled in a quick and seamless circle by Adam Parrish, whose lips were also parted in laughter.

“I haven’t had nearly enough wine for this,” she complained once she’d swallowed, arms wound loosely around Adam’s neck.

“That’s alright,” he told her, eyes gleaming. “I’ve had enough for both of us. Where’s Artemus? Is he with—”

“My mom,” Blue confirmed, nodding her head in the direction of the older drus’ enormous tree, where he stood with Maura, foreheads so close together they may as well have been touching. “It’s so stupid that they try to pretend they’re over it. They’re very clearly _not_.”

Adam snorted, shaking his sandy hair from his eyes, and gestured toward the seat at the head of the table where Noah was draped across Ronan’s lap, Gansey grinning at something Noah had said as he massaged Ronan’s shoulders from behind. “We all tried to pretend _this_ wasn’t gonna happen for—what—the first _year_ after we met? Who knows? People have their reasons.”

Blue rolled her eyes. “You’re right. That was just as obvious. Speaking of, how come you’re forcing _me_ to dance with you? Ronan’s the birthday boy _and_ your boyfriend. Shouldn’t he be subjected to this?”

“I couldn’t make Ronan Lynch dance if I wanted to,” Adam breezed, twirling Blue around again. “And I like you better anyway.”

Blue playfully smacked his chest, pushing him away from her and settling back into her seat to finish her fruit. “No more wine for you, sir. Get out of here.”

Adam blew her an air kiss and carried on his way, striding back to Ronan’s end of the table to plant an _actual_ kiss on Gansey’s temple, Noah’s cheek, and, finally, Ronan’s forehead. 

Blue smiled, soft and fond, and allowed her attention to drift hazily around the party. She’d been serious when she’d said she hadn’t had much faerie wine, but she’d had _some_ , and it was enough to make her feel a little warm and fuzzy around the edges. 

There were hovering, magical lights floating in a lazy path around the fruit farm and as Noah happily fluttered his wings, they glittered and shone like precious gems against the glowing orbs passing them by. Gansey’s teeth—only slightly sharper than a human boy’s—glinted brightly as the candles adorning the table flickered in the wind, and Ronan, as content as Blue thought she’d ever seen him, tipped his head back to whisper something into Adam’s good ear as he leaned forward, small amanita muscaria mushrooms blooming across his slightly exposed collarbone.

Blue loved her boys. All of them, equally, even if she’d known Adam the longest. Anyone who belonged to Adam belonged to her as well, and her boys all well and truly belonged to one another.

The way they melded together was something otherworldly. If it was clear apart that they weren’t human, it was undeniable once they were in the same vicinity. Their _otherness_ was fed by the _otherness_ of all of them, glorious and unfathomably bright. Blue felt like she was being trusted with a rare and impossible thing anytime she found herself in their presence, and it wasn’t a sensation that had grown into being, but one that had made itself known from the moment she’d seen them interact for the very first time. 

Blue wasn’t sure she believed in destiny or fate or the notion that _everyone_ had _someone_ (frankly, she was preferential to the idea of spending her life alone) but there was simply no denying the facts: her boys were soulmates. 

* * *

_“Does it sound crazy to you?” Adam asked softly, folding his arms behind his head as he leaned back onto the checkered fabric of Blue’s picnic blanket and closing his eyes. “Falling for three different people at the same time?”_

_Blue considered for a moment as she watched tiny green vines spring from Adam’s freckle-dotted cheekbones and curl into his unruly, sandy hair before sprouting the most perfect little flowers she had ever seen. They were the vibrant red of a wild strawberry, and the shape of forget-me-nots. After being away from the Wildwood for almost two whole months it was easy to forget the pure, raw, untouched, magic of it. She wished such pretty things existed in her world. She wished she could grow flowers on her skin instead of blushing like he could. She wished she could just stay here forever._

_“Blue?” Adam asked, opening his eyes again to look at her questioningly._

_“Oh, sorry.” She shook her head at herself as the flowers started to disappear, petals folding up and vines withdrawing from strands of hair. “No. I don’t think it sounds crazy. I think it sounds perfectly reasonable.”_

_“That’s probably because you’re half fae, isn’t it?” Adam chuckled, relaxing again and gazing up into the trees._

_“Humans do it too,” Blue corrected. “It’s just less… normal where I’m from.”_

_Adam hummed thoughtfully._

_“Tell me about them,” Blue said. She lay down on her stomach and cupped her cheeks in her hands. “What are they like?”_

_“Rich,” Adam laughed as the strawberry forget-me-nots started blooming again. “Noah and his sister own this big estate their parents left them not far from here and Ronan and Gansey are... princes.”_

_Blue raised an eyebrow. Though she didn’t say anything out loud she knew that Adam knew she was questioning his judgement; Rich and Royal was far from Adam Parrish’s type._

_“Don’t look at me like that,” Adam sighed._

_“So, do I get to call you princess now?”_

_“Absolutely not.”_

_Blue laughed. Adam was blushing—or blooming, rather—even more now, and glaring at her. She felt she deserved no such treatment._

_“You’ll get it when you meet them,” Adam assured her. “You will.”_

_“I believe you,” Blue told him. “Wanna tell me anything about them besides ‘rich’?”_

_Adam told Blue about Noah. He told her about Noah and his glassy wings and his white-blond hair and the glowing marble in his chest that reminded Adam of lava and of Gansey’s eyes. He told her that he didn’t understand the mechanics of it, but the marble kept Noah alive, even though it didn’t always work quite right. He told her that Noah was “kind of a little shit,” but “he’s really sweet, I swear.”_

_Adam told Blue about Ronan. He told her about his fair skin and his striking, ever-shifting eyes and his webbed fingers and how his legs melted into two shiny, jet black tails that tore through the water violently and gracefully and so fast he could be missed in the blink of an eye. He told her about Ronan’s mischievous nature and tough outer shell, and the way his eyes had softened when he’d rescued a field mouse that had fallen into a puddle of water just deep enough to be its doom._

_Adam told Blue about Gansey. He told her about the dimples in his smile and the flames in his eyes and the deep maroon ink covering his arms that twisted into symbols that meant nothing to anyone but the djinn. He told her about how Gansey spoke so fondly of the Red Mountain in the distance, but always froze up when asked about it._

_Adam told Blue that he felt lucky to have met them._

_“They sound magical,” Blue said when Adam fell silent, looking a little embarrassed for having talked for so long._

_“They are magical,” Adam responded fondly. “I think they’re gonna love you just as much as I do.”_

_“Your hands look nervous.”_

_Adam cast his eyes to his lap, where his fingers had been twisting around each other for the better part of the past fifteen minutes, as though he was only just noticing. “Oh. Huh. Guess they are.”_

_Blue snorted, bumping Adam’s shoulder with her own. “Chill. It’s gonna be fine. It’s just_ me _—why do you care so much about what I think anyway?”_

_“Because.” Adam, clearly exasperated, fell back across the grass, feet jerking slightly out of the river as he did so and speckling Blue’s calves with a spray of cool water. “You’re—you’re practically my sister. You know me better than anyone. And you’re gonna know if I’m being an idiot and this is gonna end in disaster and I just can’t see it because I’m so blinded by—by—”_

_“Love?”_

_Furiously, Adam’s cheeks and neck and arms bloomed with miniature roses, pink and white and red. “Don’t be ridiculous. I’m not in_ love; _I don’t even—”_

_“Hush.” Blue lay back next to him, less dramatically, and slipped her hand into his, offering a gentle squeeze. “You_ do _know what love is. You love me. You love my mom. You love Artemus.”_

_Adam didn’t contest that this was what he’d been about to say. Instead: “That’s not the same thing. Of course I love all of you, but it’s—that’s—_ different. _You’re my family. It’s ingrained in me to love you. I don’t know how to_ fall in love _.”_

_“You can’t tell me it’s just a crush,” Blue said, soft. “I_ know _you. Better than anyone, like you just said. You break out into a full-blown_ garden _when you so much as think about them. Every time we talk, you tell me about your newest adventure with them. They excite you. They take care of you. They’re_ good _for you. You_ deserve good things, _Adam.”_

_For an eternal moment, Adam was silent. Then, finally, he turned onto his side, forehead resting against Blue’s shoulder, rose petals fluttering to the grass around them. “I’d die without you.”_

_“You wouldn’t,” she told him. “But your life would suck a whole lot worse.”_

* * *

_It was another half hour or so before the first of the boys arrived, and without even properly seeing him Blue knew which one he was. He flew through the trees (not literally, although, she supposed, he could have), raced across the field, and threw himself into the river, surfacing a second later to beam up at Blue and Adam._

_“Hi!”_

_“Hi, sunshine,” Adam laughed, bending to ruffle his wet hair. “We can always count on you for an entrance, huh? Blue, this is Noah. Noah, this is my best friend, Blue.”_

_“Ooh, I love your hair!” Noah gushed, pulling himself up onto the bank and settling in on Blue’s other side to lift her hand for a kiss. “It’s so..._ spiky _.”_

_“Thank you,” Blue laughed. She was trying hard to keep eye contact, but both Noah’s translucent, shimmering wings and the large, glinting marble in the center of his bare chest fought to win her attention._

_“It’s okay,” he told her with a bubbly giggle, stroking over the marble with his fingertip. “You can look. It’s weird.”_

_Blue felt herself blushing lightly, but took his permission gratefully and allowed her gaze to travel to the orb. Its pulsing glow was mesmerizing, like liquid flame licking up the inside of the glass. “Is it hot?” she found herself asking._

_“Warm,” Noah answered, “but no, not hot. You can touch it if you want to.”_

_Blue_ did _want to, so she raised her hand to his chest, brushing the backs of her fingers against the marble._

_When she’d been a child, her cousin, Orla, had owned a plasma lamp—the kind that, if touched, followed the path of your fingers with its vibrant electricity. The orb implanted in Noah’s chest did the same. The glow pooled under her knuckles, dissipating only when she drew them away and leaving her with the sensation of a pleasant warmth, only a few degrees above the temperature of her own skin._

_“Whoa.”_

_Noah giggled again, shimmying around behind her to lie down with his head in Adam’s lap. “Right?_ Weeeird _.”_

_“_ You’re _weird,” Adam teased, tapping on the marble. “How’s it working today?”_

_“Good!” Noah answered vibrantly. “I feel great.”_

_“Good. Have you—oh.”_

_Blue was momentarily confused, but quickly understood why Adam had cut himself off when she turned her attention to the treeline. Another boy, hands in the pockets of his fine, linen pants, stepped into the field, sleeves rolled up to reveal a myriad of maroon tattoos, a watch tightened securely around his left wrist. Gansey._

_“Hello,” he called cheerily, raising a hand to wave at the trio on the bank. Then, once he’d reached them, to Adam: “Sorry I’m late, love. I had a meeting this morning that went—well, differently than expected.”_

_“That’s alright,” Adam assured him. “Is everything okay?”_

_“Fine, fine,” Gansey dismissed with a wave of his hand. “Oh, Noah, I hadn’t even noticed you there. This may be the most still I’ve ever seen you. And—I’m so sorry, where are my manners? You must be… Heavens, I’m terrible with names. Jane, was it?”_

_It took Blue a moment to realize that he was addressing her, and when she did, she couldn’t help a loud, sharp laugh escaping her chest. “Oh, I’m sorry. I just, um—it’s—my name is Blue.”_

_Gansey closed his eyes, palming his forehead in clear self-deprecation. “Forgive me. It’s lovely to finally meet you, Blue.”_

_“Jane is fine,” she joked, momentarily afraid that someone as formal as Gansey seemed to be wouldn’t appreciate humor at his own expense._

_To her relief, however, he grinned, extending his hand to shake hers. “Jane, then. It’s lovely to meet you, Jane. I’m Gansey.”_

_“It’s good to meet you, too,” she told him, letting go so that he could take his place next to Adam in the grass._

_“I thought Ronan would be with you,” Adam said, fingers carding absently through Noah’s wet hair, either oblivious or apathetic to the water soaking into his trousers._

_“He wanted to swim today,” Gansey clarified, gently coaxing one of the few remaining roses from Adam’s jaw. “He’ll be along shortly, I’m sure. He was just feeding Chainsaw when I left.”_

_“Chainsaw?” Blue questioned, flicking a beetle off her thigh._

_“His raven,” Noah elaborated. “He found her when she was a baby and now she won’t leave him.”_

_Blue raised a brow, admittedly interested, but before she could comment, a flash of black shot through the water just down the river from where they sat._

_“Ah,” Gansey sighed fondly. “There he is.”_

_There, indeed, he was. Quick as a whip—Blue would have missed him if Gansey hadn’t pointed him out—Ronan appeared before them, only his eyes above the water, silvery and shifting. He raised his webbed fingers to the surface and wiggled them in a showy, somewhat facetious wave._

_“Come heeere,” Noah whined, reaching out to him._

_Ronan rolled his eyes but took Gansey’s hands and allowed himself to be tugged onto the bank, eyeing Blue warily._

_“It’s fine,” Adam told him, clearly biting back a laugh. “I know you were raised to be a_ gentleman _or whatever, but I think she’d appreciate it if you could speak to her.”_

_Blue didn’t understand what was going on until Ronan turned his head away, coughing violently as Gansey rubbed just between his shoulder blades._

_“He’s clearing his land lungs,” Noah explained. “Which essentially means coughing up a whole bunch of water. And he didn’t wanna do it in front of a_ lady _.”_

_“I don’t see any ladies,” Blue said, crossing her arms over her abdomen._

_“Oh, sorry,” Adam responded, clearing his throat. “He didn’t wanna do it in front of a little girl.”_

_Blue narrowed her eyes, punching his bicep. “Damn you, Adam Parrish.”_

_“I’ve been damned for a_ long _time.”_

_“Oh, no, not_ Sancte Parrish _.” Ronan, who had righted himself, reached across Gansey’s crossed legs to fist his hand into the collar of Adam’s shirt and pull him in for a long enough kiss that Blue felt obligated to look away._

_When he’d been released, Adam cleared his throat for a different reason. He was sprouting blooms again, this time in the form of what looked to be black violets. “Blue, this is, um. This is Ronan. Ro—”_

_“Sargent,” Ronan interjected, holding out his fist expectantly._

_She bumped it, relaxing a little at such a casual gesture. “Hey.”_

_“Hey yourself. Did you guys bring food? I’m starving.”_

_Once they’d compiled and eaten a various array of fruits (including but not limited to wild strawberries, the gossamer oranges growing along the riverbank, and some thorny, green pods with cream inside that Blue had never seen but Ronan referred to as ‘those delicious, spiky bastards’) they spent quite a while swimming, all splashing one another and whooping with laughter and competing to find the most impressive shells and stones from the riverbed._

_By the time the sun had begun to sink slightly below the tops of the trees, Blue was having a hard time believing she’d never met these boys before today. Interacting with them was just as natural as interacting with Adam—as though she’d known them her whole life. And if_ that _was unbelievable, she couldn’t even entertain the thought of Adam having known them for such a short time. He dazzled with them, as they did with him, and with one another. It was as though they were a singular source of magic, intertwining and strengthening the longer they spent together._

_“Ugh,” she groaned, pushing herself up from where she’d been floating on her back. “I should probably head home. It’s not a great idea to cross The Path after dark.”_

_“Boo,” Noah objected, letting go of Ronan’s hand to attach himself to Blue instead, wrapping his legs around her waist like a child. “I don’t want you to go!”_

_“I don’t wanna go,” she laughed, hugging him tightly to her, careful of his wings. “But you never know what’s gonna be out there at night.”_

_“Come on, I’ll walk you,” Adam told her, already heading toward the water’s edge. “Be right back, guys.”_

_“I could come with you,” Gansey volunteered. “So you won’t be walking back alone.”_

_“I’m fine,” Adam said, helping Blue onto the bank. “Just hang out. Relax. God knows you need it.”_

_“Alright,” Gansey agreed, somewhat reluctantly. Blue liked that tone. Liked his genuine concern for Adam’s wellbeing. “If you’re sure.”_

_Adam took Blue’s hand and led her into the trees._

_They walked in silence for a while, but finally—because he was bursting at the seams, she could tell—Adam asked, “So?”_

_“So, what?” Blue countered, feigning ignorance._

_“What do you think? You know, about—about them?”_

_At the genuine nervousness in his voice, Blue tugged him to a gentle stop, cupping his cheek in her palm. “I love them, Adam. All of them.”_

_“So do I,” he admitted in a trembling breath._

_“Oh, I know,” Blue soothed. “I know you do. But you don’t need to be afraid. They love you just as much.”_

* * *

_Blue Sargent was late._

_It wasn’t that she was necessarily held to a detrimental timeline, that she would be in trouble with her job or miss an important meeting or anything of the sort. It was just that she had promised her boys she would meet them by the river to watch the sunset, and Blue Sargent did not break promises._

_She hoped, as she approached the veil that only an eye of Fae blood could see, that the way time seemed to melt around her as she crossed meant she would make it, but the sky above 300 Fox Way was already starting to fade from bright, cloudless blue to a crisp golden glow that reminded her of the sweet, sticky inside of a honeyapple._

_The border between the human world and the Wildwood stood as tall as Blue could see and shimmered like a pool of crystal clear water before her. She dipped her fingers into it, feeling the warmth of its magic dance across her skin, from her fingertips to her shoulders, a gentle buzz of static electricity, a familiar hum of music she couldn’t quite place, a smell and taste so sweet it made her eyes water. Before she knew it she was standing on the edge of the forest, hearing the crashing waves of Caeruleum behind her. She was home._

_And she was still late._

_So she ran._

_She wished she could run like Noah could, zipping between the trees carried by the wind, light as a feather, fast as a cheetah, or swim through the river like Ronan could, violent and chaotic and fast enough to miss in the blink of an eye. She couldn’t do either of those things, so she settled for running just as fast as she could without tripping over the twisting roots of the trees, clutching the picnic basket to her chest._

_She arrived, sweaty and breathless, just in time for sunset._

_“The hell took you so long?” Ronan asked with a smirk as she set the basket down and collapsed in the grass beside Noah, who smiled warmly and tucked a rogue strand of hair back into its clip._

_“Henry was on a rant,” Blue explained. “He wouldn’t let me get the sandwiches out of the fridge and there would have been hell to pay for interrupting him.”_

_“That’s quite alright, Jane,” Gansey, who was sitting upright against the trunk of the tall, wise looking tree that shaded the riverbank with Adam between his legs leaning back against his chest, assured her brightly. “We’re just glad you could make it at all.”_

_Adam nodded, craned his neck to kiss Gansey’s jaw, and sat forward to thread his fingers through Blue’s, giving her hand a gentle squeeze. She squeezed his back and smiled, letting her eyes fall closed._

_“What’d you bring us?” Ronan asked, already digging through the picnic basket, not bothering to lay out the blanket. “Oooh, what are these?”_

_Blue sat up and laughed as Ronan popped open a container of lavender macarons and held one right up to his face, eyeing it curiously and cocking his head to the side. Sometimes, just as it was with the other boys, it was easy to forget that Ronan wasn’t human. It was easy to look past his strange eyes and webbed fingers and to think of his gills as nothing more than scars. Other times, such as now, he was so almost serpentlike that it was impossible to ignore._

_“Macarons,” Blue told him. “They’re… kind of like cookies. It’s hard to explain. Henry made them, so if they’re not good, blame him.”_

_Without fear or hesitation Ronan shoved the entire macaron into his mouth._

_“Um, share please.” Noah propped himself up onto his elbow and held his hand out toward Ronan, who was grinning as he swallowed._

_“Tell Henry they’re alright,” he teased, placing one of the cookies in Noah’s hand and going for another for himself._

_“I also have these,” Blue said excitedly, pulling the basket toward herself and retrieving five short, stocky glass bottles sealed with corks and marked with black ink ‘Batch 3.’ She distributed them to the boys and kept one for herself._

_“What wild experiment is this?” Adam asked, examining the bubbling, orange-gold liquid inside the bottle._

_“They’re sodas,” Blue answered as she removed the cork from her bottle with a satisfying_ pop _and took a sip. “We made them in house. If we can perfect it we’re gonna start selling them but this is only the third time we’ve tried it. I snuck some from the back. They might be a little flat. I didn’t think about that when I was running to get here. But they’re ginger apple flavored!”_

_“I do love the ginger things you bring.” Gansey smiled fondly._

_“I know you do,” Blue told him. “I thought of you when I pitched the flavor to Henry. He wanted to do grape. He’s a monster.”_

_“Ewww,” Noah exclaimed, wrinkling his nose and fluttering his wings. “Tell Henry I strongly disagree with that idea.”_

_“Right, I’ll tell him,” Blue laughed. They all knew good and well that Blue’s adventures in the Wildwood were a secret to everyone but the women of 300 Fox Way, and that included but was not limited to Henry Cheng, Blue’s business partner and co-owner of Psychic Confections. Still, the boys liked to joke and pretend that they knew Henry just as well as they knew Blue, and they cared for him just as much as she did_ because _she did. Another addition to the endless list of reasons she loved them._

_The five of them drank their sodas and ate their sweets and watched the sunset, a thousand times more beautiful than it was in the human world. At dark, they stripped out of their clothes, not that Ronan had been wearing much to begin with, and swam in the river, Ronan’s tails causing ripples that shook the lilypads sprouting on Adam’s shoulders and blurred the faint, almost unnoticeable glow of Gansey’s tattoos until Noah complained that he was tired of swimming and Ronan complained that_ he _was tired of walking and Adam and Gansey both shook their heads._

_Blue wondered for a moment what her life had been like before she met them just a little over a year ago. Then she decided she had no interest in that, only what her life was like now that she had._

_They all clambered out of the river, redressed, clothes sticking to damp skin, and Ronan cleared his land lungs while Blue rubbed his back._

_The walk back to the farm was quiet and peaceful. Gansey carried the picnic basket and held Ronan’s arm while Adam and Noah and Blue were all linked together in a chain of hand-holding, Blue in between the two boys. The three of them walked in sync with each other, taking overly large steps to make sure it stayed that way, Blue and Noah practically leaping to keep up with Adam’s gait. Ronan rolled his eyes at them and Gansey laughed softly._

_Just as the farm came into faint, dimly lit view on the horizon Noah’s grip on Blue’s hand began to weaken and he fell out of step._

_“Noah?” Blue asked, slowing to a stop. “You okay?”_

_“Mhmm,” Noah said with a forced looking smile and a nod. “Just tired.”_

_“Tired like we spent two hours swimming, or tired like the marble isn’t working?” Adam asked, brow furrowed with concern._

_“It’s okay.” Noah shook his head and gave Blue’s hand a reassuring squeeze. “I’m okay.”_

_About five minutes passed before Noah couldn’t catch his breath and he collapsed._

_“Oh, shit,” Blue breathed, catching his feather-light frame before he hit the ground._

_“Oh, shit,” Adam echoed. “Gans?”_

_Gansey and Ronan were there in an instant, Ronan scooping Noah up out of Blue’s arms as Adam unclipped his overalls to expose the marble. The soft orange glow it usually gave off had turned to more of a muted amber, barely strong enough to shed light onto Noah’s fair chest. When Blue reached out to brush her fingertip across what she expected to be it’s warm, electric surface it was cold and unchanging._

_“It’s alright, Jane,” Gansey said, his voice gentle and steady. He set the basket down in the grass and placed a strong, reassuring hand on Blue’s shoulder, gently easing her out of the way. “He’ll be just fine.”_

_Gansey closed his eyes and placed the palm of his hand over the marble, fingers splayed out over Noah’s chest, his other hand gingerly stroking Noah’s pale cheek as Ronan pressed his lips to the top of Noah’s head and sighed._

_“Is it gonna work?” Adam asked anxiously, arms folded over his chest. Blue wrapped her arms around his waist and rested her head against his shoulder blade._

_“It always does,” Gansey assured him._

_If someone had told Blue that the moment that passed was an eternity she might have believed them. It felt like ages that they all stood in tense silence, watching, waiting for something to happen._

_The silence was all encompassing. So much so that when Gansey finally breathed a quiet “ahh,” it hurt almost Blue’s ears._

_Noah was stirring._

_“Wake up, love,” Gansey practically whispered, pressing a kiss to Noah’s forehead. “It’s alright.”_

_“What… did I pass out?” Noah asked, looking up at Gansey with a confused, slightly frightened expression._

_“Yes,” Gansey answered gently. “How are you feeling?”_

_Noah considered for a moment. “I feel okay. Just sleepy.”_

_“Let’s get back to the farm so you can rest,” Adam suggested._

_The marble was back to its normal, radiant glow, shedding soft orange light that split the growing darkness of the early evening._

_“Awh, Bluebird,” Noah sighed, casting his gaze toward Blue who was now standing behind Adam with her arms around her middle and her eyes fixed on the ground. “C’mere.”_

_Blue stepped forward._

_“It feels warm again,” Gansey told her gently. “Would it be alright for her to touch it, love? It might ease her anxiety a bit.”_

_“Of course,” Noah said, with a tired but genuine smile._

_Blue again brushed her fingertips against the surface of the marble. Gansey was right, it was warm to the touch and the molten energy inside followed her as she traced little circles around it. Noah laughed a little breathily._

_“What did you do?” Blue asked, dropping her hand into Noah’s and looking up at Gansey._

_“You won’t believe me if I tell you.” Gansey shook his head._

_“Try me.”_

_“I can’t explain it. I don’t know why it works, I just—I just know that it does. I asked the Red Mountain for help.”_

* * *

“Blue?”

Blue Sargent shook her head, pulling herself from her thoughts and allowing her consciousness to wander back to the atmosphere of Ronan Lynch’s birthday party as well as the voice calling her.

It was Noah, as it turned out, standing just over her shoulder, the gold liner around his eyes glimmering. “You have to cut the cake!” he told her excitedly, bouncing on the balls of his feet. “You know, since you made it and all.”

Blue grinned and allowed Noah to pull her up from her seat, trailing him to the head of the table where Ronan and his cake awaited. 

It was a three-tiered behemoth, each layer cut in two and filled with homemade jam consisting of a different faerie fruit. It had been nearly impossible to keep Henry from asking too many questions about what they were and even more-so to keep him from tasting them, but she managed by the skin of her teeth. The outside was decorated in a thin, crumb-coat layer of Irish buttercream as well as an assortment of edible flowers and berries, some commonplace, some very much dwellers of the Wildwood. She’d offered to prepare a separate cake for her mother, given that, as a human, she couldn’t partake in the consumption of fae foods, but she’d declined, stating that she would feel singled out further with a personal cake at someone else’s party.

“Oh, you don’t need to cut it, Sargent,” Ronan teased, sharp smile flashing brightly. “Nobody else is eating any.”

Gansey, still positioned behind Ronan’s seat, leaned down to plant a kiss on his shoulder. “I think Noah would have your head, love.”

“I would,” Noah confirmed from his newly claimed seat to Ronan’s left, swiping his finger through the buttercream and sucking it off with an only moderately appropriate moan. “God, Blue, I want _this_ for my birthday. Just this. A bathtub full of it.”

“We can make that happen,” Blue laughed, ruffling his hair. “Anybody got a knife?”

As was neither anticipated nor surprising, Gansey drew a ritual dagger from his pocket, tossing it with a deft, gentle underhand to Blue.

She caught the hilt and rolled her eyes, holding it up pointedly. “Really? You people are so edgy.”

“Practical,” Gansey countered with a wink.

“There’s nothing practical about you. Any of you.”

To Ronan’s credit, he did devour nearly half the cake on his own. Fae appetites could prove to be much larger than human ones, not to mention that if Ronan Lynch strove to prove a point, it would be proven.

Once the cake had been conquered (truly—there was nothing left but crumbs, all the fruits and flowers adorning its exterior having been consumed as well) the party turned its attention to the oversized tree stump serving as a gift table, ribbons and tissue paper monopolizing the entirety of its surface. 

“Whose do you wanna open first, Ro?” Noah questioned excitedly, wings flitting with anticipation.

“Surprise me,” Ronan told him, closing his eyes and holding out his hand for a present.

Noah stood and traipsed across the ground, carefully selecting a small, silver-wrapped package from the pile. Blue instantly recognized it—it had come from her home; from herself and her mother, but heavily suggested by persephone. Blue wasn’t sure why, but she knew better than to ever question Persephone’s advice, so question it she had not. 

Ronan’s eyes sprung open when Noah placed the parcel in his hand and he began tearing away at the wrapping like a child on Christmas morning. After struggling to break through the several thousand layers of tape securing the blank cardboard box, he thrust his hand inside and withdrew it again, now clutching the large, black object inside.

He stared at it for a moment in confusion, tilting his head in that serpentine way of his, examining all its sides and angles as his pointed ears twitched with intrigue. “What is it?”

Blue allowed a fond giggle to slip past her lips. “It’s a camera,” she told him. “A polaroid. I guess you wouldn’t ever have seen one underwater. Or, um...maybe not at all around here, actually.” Now that Blue was considering, she didn’t believe she’d ever encountered one in the Wood. “But you can—here. Let me show you.”

There was already film loaded into the camera, so Blue instructed him on the act of taking a photo, which he strategically aimed directly at Gansey’s ass. When it popped out, Ronan blinked in surprise, hesitating for a moment before removing it from the camera.

“It’s blank.”

“Give it a second,” Maura chuckled from where she watched by Artemus’ side. “It’s developing.”

Ronan tapped his foot impatiently, but cocked a brow after a moment, the corner of his mouth twitching upward in amusement. “Hmm. I think I’ll keep this one.”

“You are a menace,” Gansey accused warmly, shaking his head.

“I am,” Ronan conceded devilishly. Then, turning his attention to Blue, “Thanks, maggot. This doesn’t suck.”

Blue nodded once in a somber facade. “I’m glad it’s up to your standards, your highness.”

“Bring me my next gift, peasant!” Ronan called to Noah, who was currently busy crafting a chain with blades of grass.

He made a great show of abandoning his work but strode back to the gift stump, selecting a second parcel and placing it in Ronan’s hands. This one, Blue assumed based on the parchment, had come from Artemus. It was the same, brown paper his farmed goods were packaged and sold in.

When Ronan tore it away, Blue saw a glint of gold flicker in the glow of the lights. 

“A compass,” Artemus elaborated, for everyone who couldn’t clearly make out what Ronan cupped in his palm. “It will always lead to the farm, should you ever find yourself lost. No matter how familiar the Wood, we must always remember that she has a mind of her own. Best to be safe.”

Ronan smiled, sincere, and offered Artemus a quick bow. “Thank you. I’ll be sure to keep it on me.”

Noah, in his impatience, had removed the remaining four gifts from the stump and stacked them on the table next to Ronan. As he opened the one closest to him, a soft smile formed on Gansey’s mouth. It was a book, Blue could see from her seat, bound in leather and fastened with an ornate, brass hook. Ronan undid the clasp and flipped it open, stroking over the first page with his thumb, and blew a soft laugh out his nose.

“For your dreams,” he read aloud. “H. G.”

“Helen desperately wanted to come tonight,” Gansey said, lips quirked up fondly. “Our parents had an event and would’ve thrown a fit if we’d both missed it, so she took one for the team.”

Ronan set the journal down to his left, closing it, and nodded his head. “I’ll have to thank her later. She’s been, um—I have a lot of, just. Weird dreams. Sometimes I can’t sleep. Sometimes she can’t sleep. So.”

That, Blue thought, hadn’t really explained much of anything, but before she or anyone else could say so, Noah pushed a roughly wrapped package toward him, clearly excited. “That’s where Adele is, too! Gansey’s parents’, I mean. Well. The palace, I guess. Anyway, this is from me, and then you can open hers.”

Ronan eyed him warily but accepted the gift, peeling back the wrapping to reveal a beautiful, crystal decanter. Bearing no wine.

“We make the best wine in the Wood!” Noah proclaimed proudly. “Which is why I drank it all before I came.”

Ronan snorted, uncorking the decanter and tipping it up so that the last few drops fell onto his tongue. “It’s a good thing you know where to find me. I’ll just guilt you into bringing me more later.”

“Fair,” Noah giggled. “Okay, okay, here. Adele’s.”

Adele’s gift was wrapped much more neatly, in shimmering, golden paper. It was dazzling enough that even Ronan, it seemed, wasn’t keen to tear it. He eased the wax securing it gently away and unfolded it carefully, briefly pausing once he’d removed enough to see what was inside.

“What is it?” Blue asked, unable to contain her interest in something that could cause Ronan Lynch to stop in his tracks, however briefly. 

“Caeruleum,” he answered quietly. “It’s, um. It’s a globe. With sand and water and my—the castle inside. Tell her I appreciate it, sunshine, okay?”

Suddenly appearing slightly more sober, Noah placed his hand over Ronan’s where it rested on the table and bent to quickly kiss his head. “Yeah. I will.”

“This one from you, Parrish?” Ronan asked, gesturing toward the last present of the pile. It wasn’t wrapped at all—just a hand-sized, wooden box. Blue guessed Ronan was assuming that Adam had _made_ said box, because Blue was assuming the same.

“Yeah,” Adam admitted, clearing his throat (which Blue knew to be a nervous tell). “You don’t have to wear them, I just—well. Open it.”

Ronan did so, and as small, pink buds began to bloom across the bones of Adam’s cheeks, he did a double-take. “Holy shit. They’re copying you.”

“Yeah,” Adam repeated. “I made them. Yours were just getting super worn out, so I thought maybe—but, you know, like I said, you don’t—”

“Shut up,” Ronan interrupted, stripping his ever-present black bands from his wrists and extracting what Blue now saw were similar ones outfitted with blooms matching Adam’s from the box. “Now I’ll always know when somebody’s gettin’ you all flustered, even if I’m not there.”

Both Adam’s flowers and those on the bracelets grew a furious shade of red. 

Until well into the night, the lot of them drank and laughed and danced and sang, and Maura stopped pretending she wouldn’t spend the night and accompanied Artemus back to his tree, and Noah finally settled into a warm, sleepy haze and made himself a bed in the moss, and Adam proclaimed that he was going to the edge of the farm to gather some firewood, and Blue sat, content, at the table, surrounded happily by the glow of the lights and the company of her best friends.

She hadn’t noticed, nor, it seemed, had anyone else, that Ronan had not received a gift from Gansey.

Not until, that was, Gansey pulled a stump around to the head of the table, placing it next to Ronan’s seat, and sat down upon it, reaching into his jacket to remove something that Blue was suspicious he’d spelled to be invisible, given that she hadn’t noticed a lump in his side all evening.

They were fully in their own world, Ronan as soft as she’d only ever seen him with Gansey and Gansey alone. Her presence had been fully overlooked, but she cast her gaze to the trees beyond them just in case they happened to remember her there and find that she was eavesdropping. 

Still, out of the corner of her eye, she could see them. Barely, over the cadence of the forest’s nighttime rituals, she could hear them.

“What the hell is this?” Ronan asked, taking the delicate, ornate crown of flowers from Gansey’s hands into his own.

“Put it on,” Gansey instructed, lifting Ronan’s hands with his own to place the crown atop his head. “You don’t have to wear it always, of course. But the flowers won’t ever die. I wanted to remind you that even if you aren’t in the lineup for a kingdom anymore, you’re still every bit as much a prince.”

If, in the following moments, Ronan shed a tear, Blue didn’t notice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yeehaw


End file.
